While property taxes are a promising source of stable and more equitable local finance, they remain underutilized across much of sub-Saharan Africa. To address this problem, the Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI), with the African School of Economics and Benin’s Directorate General of Taxes, and with support from the Fund for Innovation in Development, convened an international property tax conference in Cotonou, Benin. Held on October 28–29, 2025, the conference brought together over 100 experts, policymakers, and practitioners to share their insights and experiences in property tax reform.
Discussions revealed the recurrence of similar technical, political, and administrative challenges across countries and highlighted how innovative reform tools are being adapted to local realities to address those barriers. As such, this blog explores four main themes that formed the core of these discussions: challenges of collaboration, public trust and compliance, the question of linking land and property tax systems, and broader uses of property tax data.
Reducing Transaction Costs for Sustained Collaboration
Inter-institutional collaboration in many property tax systems is often ad-hoc, time-consuming, and hard to maintain as a routine part of administrative work. Discussions featured several examples of how governments are trying to make inter-institutional collaboration more workable in practice. Strategies shared include formalizing collaboration to make commitments credible and enforceable; technical integration to ease data-sharing; and institutional restructuring that reduces the distance between key actors.
For example, in Benin, Mrs. Vincentia Akoto Okry (Departmental Director, General Directorate of Taxes) described a yearly partnership agreement between the Directorate and the municipalities that sets a shared calendar and work plan, requires regular check-ins on achievement of targets and an annual review. The agreement has been institutionalized in the law and is required for municipal budget approval.
In Togo, Mr. Kwami Obossou (Director of the Cadastre and Land Registration, Togo Revenue Authority) explained that placing the cadastral and land registration department and the tax department under the same revenue authority enables a routine “permanent exchange” of land information, while ongoing efforts at technical integration aim to further streamline this process.
Building Trust to Strengthen Compliance
Even where tax bills are delivered to eligible properties, many do not pay, with compliance rates averaging only 30% in many African countries. Discussions made clear that public trust-building activities, rather than a focus on law enforcement alone, are decisive for building strong compliance.
Participants based in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia emphasized the centrality of perceived fairness for effective enforcement, describing how citizens lose trust when only “the small people” are forced to pay property taxes, while the wealthy and powerful can evade them. Compliance also depends heavily on citizens’ beliefs that their taxes will contribute to tangible improvements in public services. Mrs. Nyima Camara (Director of Planning, Kanifing Municipal Council) framed this as a problem of reversing the adverse cycle of low taxation and limited public services. She described how the ongoing Mbalit waste initiative in Kanifing municipality is visibly expanding citywide waste-collection using council-branded trucks, while the assignment of Google Plus Codes to registered properties has improved the Council’s ability to locate properties for both waste collection and tax collection. According to Mrs. Camara, the resulting increases in tax collection will fund the improved service delivery, which will in turn boost compliance rates, leading to “a better social contract with the community of Kanifing.”
Mr. James Mafunga (Director of Finance, Zomba City Council, Malawi) added the importance of public input on the allocation of funds, referencing the creation of a Public Service Fund that supports priority projects identified by community representatives. Others, such as Mr. Anthony Quiacoe (Head of Development Planning, Shama District Assembly, Ghana), highlighted the use of public forums and feedback channels to ensure citizen transparency and input around the allocation of funds.
Two-way Dating Sharing Between Land and Property Tax Administrations
Ideally, the data collected by land administrations would be used to strengthen property tax administration, and vice versa. Such is the case in Rwanda, where a two-way data sharing agreement has led to real-time integration of the land and tax administration systems. According to Mr. Ernest Karasira (Assistant Commissioner for Provinces and Decentralized Revenue Division, Rwanda Revenue Authority), this has enabled automatic property identification and registration for tax purposes, while also enabling the land administration to identify unpaid property taxes before conducting ownership transfers. Mr. Apollinaire Boua Bahi (Cadaster Director, General Tax Directorate of Côte d’Ivoire) also provided the example of the IDUFCI, a common, government-wide plot identification number recently created in Côte d’Ivoire which eases inter-institutional data sharing.
In many cases, however, property data is collected solely by land administration before being shared with property tax administrations – if at all. These “cadaster-first” approaches often reflect the belief that full legal registration of a property and its owner is necessary before taxation can proceed. However, this cadastral data is often highly incomplete, out-of-date, and unreliably shared with tax administrations. To overcome this barrier, Dr. Wilson Prichard (Chair, LoGRI) advocated for a “property-tax-first” approach, starting with a geographic information system (GIS) map based on aerial imagery to register properties for tax purposes. This approach allows taxation to proceed in a fast and cost-effective manner even where legal owners cannot be identified, while still producing property data that can subsequently feed into the creation of a complete legal cadaster.
Realizing the Wider Benefits of Property Tax Data
Researchers and reformers are starting to uncover how the data collected for property taxation can lead to broader improvements in public administration. Graeme Stewart-Wilson (Doctoral Fellow, LoGRI) emphasized how comprehensive property mapping and the documentation of property characteristics and ownership details give governments a uniquely “rich spatial database” that can be used to strengthen land administration, national tax administration, and territorial planning. For example, Ghana’s national Revenue Authority connected its rent tax application to the district local revenue (dLRev) property platform to geolocate rented properties and monitor compliance work in real time.
Similarly, Mrs. Flavia Zabali Musisi (GIS specialist, Kampala City Authority) described how Kampala linked GIS-based addresses and Computer-Aided Mass Valuation data into a single database that includes spatial layers for land use, roads, and utilities. This improved overall navigation and enabled real-time tracking of property valuation, ownership, and compliance, which Mrs. Musisi associates with a fourfold increase in property-rate revenues since 2016/17 and with operational gains in service delivery, urban planning, and door-to-door navigation. Demonstrating these cross-governmental benefits of property tax data is vital for building the political will necessary to sustain long-term property tax reforms.
Looking Ahead
The two-day conference in Cotonou provided a rare platform for experts and practitioners to share their experiences and learn directly from peers facing similar constraints. In closing reflections, participants stressed the importance of carrying forward this cross-country learning to sustain the momentum behind property tax reform.
To learn more, see LoGRI’s Cotonou 2025 webpage to access conference recaps, full session recordings, and press coverage of the event.
Photo credit to Jared/Adobe Stock