Briefing paper · Land and public services
A world-class land system for Fiji
Ninety-one per cent of Fiji is customary land. No country in the world yet runs customary land well online. Fiji has the chance to be the first, and Vanua OS is designed to deliver it.
In brief. Every lease of customary land in Fiji passes through many hands: landowners, the iTaukei Land Trust Board, surveyors, valuers, banks and tenants. None of them sees the whole picture. Leases take a long time, landowners struggle to see where their rent goes, tenants face uncertainty when leases near their end, and government makes decisions on information that is weeks or months old.
Vanua OS puts every step, every dollar and every report from the village on one shared record that each party can see in its own role. It does not replace the Board or the law; it makes them faster to work with and easier to trust.
What we ask of leaders: support a pilot in one province, agree a way for the Board's records and Vanua OS to exchange information, and judge the result on the measures set out in section 7.
1. Where Fiji starts from
The shift from farm leases to housing leases tells its own story: towns are growing onto customary land, and the number of people who depend on a smooth lease process grows with them. Yet much of the work still runs on paper files, office visits and phone calls. When a lease stalls, nobody outside the office holding it can see why.
The people who feel this most are the landowners, who are often spread across villages, towns and overseas, and the tenants. In December 2023, dairy farmers in Tailevu were told verbally that their leases would not be renewed. Neither side should learn about something that important that late, or that informally.
2. What world-leading looks like
Rwanda: every parcel in the country, at about US$6 each
In about five years, finishing in 2013, Rwanda registered all its land for the first time, about 10.3 million parcels. It did not use expensive surveys with concrete markers. It used aerial photographs, and trained local people walked each boundary with the owner, the neighbours and the village leader so that everyone agreed it on the spot. A UK government case study puts the cost at US$5.47 to US$6.48 per parcel. Neighbouring countries trying similar programmes have spent far more. The lesson for Fiji: the community does the mapping, and it is cheap, fast and accepted because the community did it.
Georgia: register in a day, and the money moves by itself
Georgia rebuilt its public registry in 2004. Ownership can now be registered the same day for a higher fee. Under its "smart contract" service the purchase money waits in a secure account and is released to the seller automatically once ownership is registered. The lesson for Fiji: lease premiums and rent can be held safely and released the moment each step is confirmed, so no party has to trust another party's word.
The gap nobody has filled
Rwanda and Georgia register individual owners. Fiji's land belongs to groups, decisions need the consent of many members, and income has to be shared fairly among them. No country has built a system that does this well. That is why Fiji can lead rather than follow.
3. Eight commitments that would make Vanua OS the best in the world
One trusted map of every parcel Live
Each parcel shows its owning unit, whether it is leased, to whom, the expiry date and the rent. Mapping follows Rwanda's method: members walk the boundary with a phone, neighbours agree it, and drone or satellite images confirm it. The map improves over time rather than waiting for a perfect national survey. In the lease desk today, an officer walks the boundary with a phone or taps its corners on a street or satellite map, records which neighbours agreed it, and any member can mark it disputed.
Every member sees what their land earns Live
Each member of a landowning unit can see the rent received, the costs taken off, the reserve kept and their own share, with dates. Payouts need a second officer's approval. This is the feature most likely to build trust among landowners, and it is already working in the Vanua OS lease desk.
The whole lease journey in one place Live
Members give or refuse consent from anywhere, including overseas, against the unit's threshold (60% by default). The lease then moves through application, survey, valuation and offer, premium and registration, with the person holding each step and the days it has waited shown to everyone involved. Anything overdue is flagged with a ready-written reminder.
Early warning before leases expire Live
Landowners and tenants are alerted years before a lease ends, so renewal, new terms or a planned handover can be agreed in good time. The lease desk already flags every lease inside the Board's ten-year renewal window. Farmers can plan their investment and landowners can plan their land use.
Live reports from every village Live
Village headmen and nominated reporters send photographs tagged with their location: a road washed out, a water supply failed, cyclone damage, a school roof gone. Ministries see the whole country within hours rather than weeks. This gives government the immediate information it needs to send services where they are needed. It is open now at Village reports, where named officials mark what action is being taken.
Built for the people who need it most Next
It works in iTaukei and English, keeps working without signal and catches up when it reconnects, runs on low-cost phones, and offers a text-message route where there is no data. A system that only works in Suva on a new phone is not a national system.
A record nobody can quietly change Live
Every step is kept with the name of the person and the date. Nothing can be edited or deleted after the fact. Disputes are settled on the record, and any official, auditor or member can check what happened.
Land that opens the door to credit and growth Next
A record of rent paid on time can build a tenant's credit history. Lease income can support lending to landowning units. Farm leases can link to agricultural support, and land available for housing can reach buyers. Land stops being a static asset and becomes a working one.
Underneath, records follow the international standard for land information (ISO 19152, the Land Administration Domain Model). That keeps Fiji's data portable, and the system credible to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and Pacific development partners.
4. What it does not change
The Board remains the legal trustee of iTaukei land, and its consent is still required for every lease. The Vola ni Kawa Bula remains the register of members. Vanua OS keeps the shared working record and makes every step visible and faster to follow up. Money stays in the bank accounts and wallets of the parties. Records about members stay private to their own unit. Anything shown to the public shows progress and totals, never names.
5. What has to be true for this to succeed
- The Board sees it as its own tool. Without that, it cannot become the official record. The realistic route is to begin as a transparency tool for one province, prove the gains, then agree a formal way for records to pass between the two systems.
- Members' information is protected. Each member sees only their own unit, under clear rules that leaders can inspect.
- Keeping it up to date is rewarded. Village reporters need a reason to keep reporting, whether a small payment or a visibly faster response to what they report.
- Funding covers upkeep, not only the build. Rwanda found that keeping its registry up to date after the first push was the harder part to fund. The plan has to budget for years four and five, not only year one.
6. Risks, stated plainly
| Risk | Why it matters | How it is handled |
|---|---|---|
| Mapping brings old boundary disputes into the open | A map can harden a disagreement that was previously left alone | A dispute is recorded as a dispute, not settled by the map. A built-in process brings in the parties, elders and the Board |
| Institutions move slowly | Formal agreement could take 12 to 24 months | The landowner and tenant features are useful on their own from day one, so progress does not wait for formal approval |
| Information goes out of date | A stale record is worse than none, because people rely on it | Every record shows when it was last confirmed, and stale items are flagged automatically |
| Poor connectivity in rural areas | The people with the most at stake are often the least connected | Works offline, with a text-message fallback |
| Misuse of personal information | Membership and income are sensitive | Access tied to each person's role, every view and change logged, nothing published by name |
7. How leaders should judge it
| Measure | What good looks like in the pilot province |
|---|---|
| Time to complete a lease | Cut from months to weeks, measured from first application to registration |
| Land mapped and agreed | Every parcel of the participating units walked and agreed by neighbours |
| Rent paid on time | A rising share each quarter, with arrears visible to owners and tenants |
| Members who check their share | Most adult members of the participating units, including those overseas |
| Speed of village reports | Damage and service failures reach the responsible ministry within hours |
| Leases reaching expiry unplanned | None: every lease within five years of expiry has a renewal or handover plan |
8. A realistic path
Phase 1 · Months 0 to 12 · Prove it in one province
Work with a small number of willing landowning units and their tenants. Map their parcels, run every live lease through the lease desk, pay out rent through it, and switch on village reporting. Publish the results against the measures in section 7.
Phase 2 · Months 12 to 24 · Make it official
Agree with the Board how records pass between the two systems. Connect the ministries that act on village reports. Seek development-partner funding for a national rollout on the strength of the pilot's numbers rather than a forecast.
Phase 3 · Years 2 to 5 · National coverage
Extend province by province, train local mappers and reporters as Rwanda did, and fund the upkeep that keeps the record true.
Fiji does not need to copy anyone. It needs to do for group-owned land what Rwanda and Georgia did for individual land. A country of under a million people, with one dominant form of land tenure and a single trustee, is better placed than almost anywhere to do it first and do it properly.
Sources
- iTaukei Land Trust Board, Corporate Profile (share of land, number of leases). tltb.com.fj
- Fiji Sun, "More homes, less farming on iTaukei land", 1 February 2026 (active, residential and agricultural lease figures given to Parliament by the Board's chief executive). fijisun.com.fj
- Ministry of Lands and Mineral Resources, "Land Management – Fiji", UN-GGIM High Level Forum, 2016 (share of iTaukei land surveyed). ggim.un.org
- RNZ Pacific, "iTaukei land: Tenants raise concerns about landowners", 18 December 2023. rnz.co.nz
- Gillingham, P. and Buckle, F., Rwanda Land Tenure Regularisation Case Study, Evidence on Demand for the UK Department for International Development, March 2014. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk
- VoxDev, "Land reform: Lessons from Rwanda's success", April 2026. voxdev.org
- National Agency of Public Registry of Georgia, Smart Contract service. napr.gov.ge
- World Bank Doing Business, "Land administration reforms in Georgia" (case study, 2007). doingbusiness.org