Lands Minister vows to end goro boys hustle at Lands Commission | Discuss Ghana

Getting your land registered in Ghana has historically been a headache, but the government is promising a massive digital overhaul to make unofficial middlemen a thing of the past. The Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, has announced that the Ministry is targeting a strict one-month turnaround time for land registration by moving services online to completely lock out "goro boys" (middlemen).

Speaking at a press conference in Accra on Wednesday, July 15, 2026, the Minister made it clear that using outdated, paper-heavy systems to process land titles is no longer acceptable in the modern era.

The plan to digitize land services

The Minister outlined how the new Strategic Land Administration Reform Project (SLAP) is designed to make the Lands Commission faster, more secure, and completely transparent:

Going 90% Online: The goal is to allow Ghanaians to apply for land searches, registrations, and other vital documents directly from their phones or computers. "We want to get to the place where people, from the comfort of their homes, can access 90 per cent of the services that these 'goro boys' and connection people have," Buah stated.

The "ELIS" Rollout: The government's Enterprise Land Information System (ELIS) is already fully active in nine regional offices across Ghana—including Greater Accra, Eastern, Western, and Volta. People in these regions can now apply for official land searches online without having to step foot inside a physical office.

Keeping the Cash to Fund Reforms: To ensure the project has enough funding to succeed, President John Dramani Mahama has directed the Ministry of Finance to let the Lands Commission keep $67\%$ of its generated revenue to reinvest directly into these digital reforms rather than paying all of it into the central government's Consolidated Fund.