Practices and Challenges of Land Acquisition for Residential House: The Case of Silkamba Town West Shewa Zone, Oromia National Regional State, Ethiopia

Abstract

The research was conducted in the Ethiopian regional state of Oromia, in the town of Silkamba. The community was struggling with a land acquisition problem for residential house provision services. The major objective of this study was to assess the techniques and obstacles of acquiring land for residential development in Silkamba. In this study, a descriptive research strategy was used with a mixed research method. 352 respondents were chosen at random from the Silkamba town population using a simple random sample technique, whereas 11 respondents were chosen by deliberate sampling. Surveys and interviews were used to collect information. Using the statistical package for social science (SPSS) version 23 software, the quantitative data were meticulously sorted, processed, tabulated, and analyzed. The numeric data were interpreted using descriptive statistics, while the qualitative data were evaluated thematically. The study's key findings include gender bias and male households' dominance in procuring land for residential building in the analyzed area. The land distribution regimes in the research region are cooperative, freehold, and assign. The majority of them were informal settlements, which are rather unusual in Silkamba town. The majority of respondents cited low land supply, a lengthy bureaucracy, and the town's difficult-to-access land acquisition system as the top concerns with land buying in Silkamba town. The majority of respondents obtained their land through purchase and meeting municipal standards; the remainder inherited their land. In terms of infrastructure, 318 respondents (90.4%) stated that no fundamental infrastructure, such as roads, power, or water supply, exists on the provided and inhabited land. The key difficulties confronting the research area's land delivery system were the expansion of illegal settlements, the collapse of illicit land markets, land use distortion, the presence of local brokers, and a lack of investment attraction. Furthermore, the study's findings revealed that the zonal and district levels of government did not solve the town's residential land acquisition problem and difficulties. As a result, it was recommended that responsible bodies redesign the implementation program, giving priority to the urban poor and legalizing existing informal settlements, controlling unplanned urbanization growth, developing clear, short, easy-to-access land delivery systems, and removing irrelevant steps.