There are few investments more treacherous than buying land in Nigeria.
In 2017, Ndifreke Ikpoku paid ₦23 million ($13,000) for what appeared to be a legitimate plot on the outskirts of Port Harcourt, a growing urban city in the country. The documents checked out—until they didn’t.
On closer inspection, the “asset” he believed would cement his place in Nigeria’s aspirational middle-class was little more than paperwork for land that had already been sold multiple times over.
He lost the money—and the pride that comes with being a landowner in Nigeria—but not his resolve.
That loss would become the foundation of a startup.
Alongside Nnamdi Uba, Ikpoku set out to tackle one of the country’s most entrenched property-market failures: ownership verification. They founded Sytemap, formerly HouseAfrica, a startup that digitises land records on the blockchain to reduce fraud and double allocation.
In Nigeria’s property market, fraud is not an anomaly; it is a structural feature. Developers sell more plots than exist. Agents market land that has quietly changed hands. Double allocation, where multiple buyers are issued rights to the same parcel, is common.
Verifying title status often requires physically visiting a registry, navigating opaque bureaucracy, and dealing with incomplete records.
The risks are particularly acute in Lagos, where peri-urban estates are spreading rapidly, and land can change hands several times before formal registration is complete.
While laws, such as the Lagos State Lands Registration Law (2015) and the Land Use Act (1978), seek to legitimise the property market for homebuyers in the state and the country at large, the gap often lies in enforcement.
Poor record management and inconsistent oversight create fertile ground for fraud. In August 2025, the federal government launched a digital portal allowing homebuyers to track, report, and monitor housing fraud—an acknowledgment of how deeply the problem runs.
“The main reason we started [Sytemap] was because he [Ikpoku] lost a huge amount of money buying real estate,” Uba, Sytemap’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), said. “We realised we couldn’t solve it by just sharing risk. The problem was structural. What was missing was infrastructure.”
In 2019, the startup launched as “HouseAfrica” with an initial ambition to enable fractional property ownership on blockchain rails. The premise, said Uba, was that ten people could own a property and share rental income transparently. But almost immediately, Ikpoku and Uba encountered a deeper obstacle.
“We were having a lot of questions then,” Uba said. “What of the [land] title? What if something happens? How can we verify these properties? These are infrastructure issues that were already affecting us. If the underlying land is not verified, you cannot fractionalise it safely.”
Before they could tokenise ownership, they had to solve verification. That realisation eventually led to what is now Sytemap and to the creation of what the founders describe as a digital map directory for real estate in Lagos State.
The registry that stalled
The founders’ first instinct was to work with the government.
They said they partnered with the Nigerian Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC), an institution that provides liquidity in the mortgage market, and signed agreements with the Nigerian Institution of Surveyors. They explored integrating a blockchain-based land registry with Kaduna State, a north-western state in Nigeria, as a pilot.
“We wanted to launch a blockchain-based land registry as the infrastructure that can help us to do fractional ownership,” said Uba. “If we have a blockchain registry, we can clearly tell people, go here and verify.”
Then the pandemic arrived; the bureaucratic processes slowed further.
“We stayed the whole lot of 2020 without achieving one single thing,” said Uba.
By 2021, the founders concluded that waiting for state integration would stall the company indefinitely. They began asking a different question: who already controls structured land records?
The answer was private developers.
The map directory solution
Real estate developers in Lagos typically buy large parcels of land and subdivide them into plots. Internally, they maintain allocation records, site plans, and buyer registers. In effect, each developer operates a small, private registry.
Plot configuration often depends on the developer’s intended use—residential, commercial, or mixed-use—and must comply with planning standards before allocation begins.
Instead of digitising the state registry, Sytemap decided to digitise those mini-registries and connect them into a single mapped system.
“What we did was to drop other features and pick only the real estate companies,” said Uba. “Developers buy acres of land and divide it into smaller plots again, which means they have access to land records. They are mini-registries. Our solution can help them to achieve what they want to do, but in a structured way.”
The core product that emerged is what the company calls a map directory. It is a satellite-backed digital representation of estates across Lagos and, soon, other states. Each estate is mapped, each plot geo-referenced, and every allocation is recorded against a specific coordinate on the map.
Ikpoku said Sytemap uses Google Maps as a base map and infuses other maps to enhance the embedded features on its platform. The digitised data on the map (the mapped properties) is obtained from real estate companies, who, at the point of onboarding, have government-approved estate development layouts.
“You are not going to buy audio land,” said Ikpoku. “What you are buying is what you are seeing [on the map]. We do not just digitise property because a developer gives it to us. We verify that they own it and that it is there. Then we place it on the map with satellite imagery that tells you exactly where this property is.”
According to Ajayi Akinwumi, a Lagos-based surveyor, large estates in the city are typically mapped using differential global positioning system (DGPS) equipment to achieve high positional accuracy before plots are formally demarcated on the ground.
“After capturing the plots, you still have to do layout and physically divide each plot,” he said. “It is not something satellite imagery alone can determine.”
Yet, Sytemap says its proprietary map directory serves three functions.
First, it visualises supply. If an estate has 500 plots, the system shows 500 plots.
“With our satellite imagery, if it is 500, it is 500,” said Uba. “Once it is sold out, it is sold out.”
Second, it locks allocation in real time. When a buyer selects a specific plot, that plot is reserved digitally. The system does not allow a second buyer to select the same coordinates once they are marked unavailable. This is how Sytemap argues it prevents double allocation.
Third, it becomes the base layer for tokenising payments.
Tokenising payment, not speculation
In global markets, real estate tokenisation often refers to issuing digital securities that represent fractional ownership in a property. Sytemap has deliberately taken a different approach.
Under Sytemap’s model, a buyer can select a specific plot on the map directory and lock it with a minimum payment that can be as low as ₦50,000 ($37). The balance can be spread across as many as 24 months. Each installment is recorded on the blockchain. For every payment made, the buyer receives a digital token that represents that portion of the obligation fulfilled.
“As you are making payment, we are giving you tokens representing what you have paid,” said Uba. “At the end, those tokens can be converted into vouchers. We partnered with over 200 [retail] stores [in Nigeria]. You can convert it to a Shoprite voucher or any supermarket within your location. It is to encourage completion of payment.”
The token, in this case, does not represent a tradable security. It represents proof of payment within a mapped allocation system. The distinction is important in Nigeria’s regulatory environment, where digital investment products fall under securities oversight.
Sytemap is testing limited fractional ownership models through cooperative structures. In one pilot, groups of women co-own retail shops in Lagos and Abuja.
Due diligence and the Lagos registry question
One question hanging over any private land digitisation effort in Lagos is whether it conflicts with the government Land Registry.
Sytemap says it does not replace the registry and does not issue statutory titles. Instead, it sits upstream, helping to build a structure for developers’ inventory and recording transactions.
“We go and do a search, and get those search reports,” said Ikpoku. “For lands, we have people who get to the registry to give us the real status of those properties, and then we match that with what the developer has provided. If that checks out, then it is fine. For family-owned land, we also try to look at that as well through qualified lawyers.”
He added that the startup encourages buyers to independently verify.
“We still encourage them to do a second layer of verification, even when they have seen what is available on our platform,” Ikpoku said.
Akinwumi cautioned that digital mapping does not eliminate the need for independent physical verification. Large estates often require multiple professionals to validate layouts, titles, and boundary demarcations.
“You still have to go to the site and inspect physically,” said Akinwumi. “It is beyond what one person can handle alone. Proper reports must be filed.”
The business model and traction
Sytemap operates as a hybrid of software provider and marketplace.
Developers pay a setup fee to digitise their estates and integrate them into the map directory. When plots are sold through the platform, Sytemap takes between 10%–15% commission.
The startup said it generated $100,000 in revenue across its first two years following its 2021 pivot. In 2025 alone, the startup made $300,000 in annual revenue, according to the founders.
In 2025, the startup said it facilitated ₦1.5 billion ($1.1 million) in property sales. In January 2026, it recorded ₦80 million ($59,000) in transaction value for the month.
Sytemap currently has over 20,000 registered users, over 70% of whom are women, according to Uba. About 2,000 women are active in its WhatsApp-based community, which the startup uses to drive sales and education around land ownership.
“We found out that women are the best place to enter,” said Uba. “Only around 20–30% of women own land in Nigeria. That is an untapped market. So we built a community around them, and that unlocked the selling part for developers.”
The startup measures growth primarily by transaction volume, number of plots sold, and the number of women it helps become landowners. Uba claimed Sytemap helped facilitate the sale of over 500 plots of land in 2025, yet according to the founders, the tokenisation startup currently has about 9–10 months of runway and is in talks to raise funding.
The moat: data, mapping, and exclusivity
Sytemap’s long-term defensibility rests on aggregation.
In December 2025, the startup signed an exclusive partnership with the Real Estate Developers Association of Nigeria (REDAN), which has about 5,000 members. The goal, said Ikpoku, is to register member estates and transactions into a centralised system.
Sytemap also says that through its partnership with REDAN, it can access building approval records held with the Lagos State Building Control Agency (LASBCA), the regional planning regulator in the state. This allows users to cross-reference planning approvals with mapped properties.
“With our system, if you see a property, you can also make reference to that property connected to Lagos building approval agency,” said Ikpoku. “So we have access to all building approval in Lagos through the partnership that we’ve signed with [REDAN].”
The founders describe this as part of a broader attempt to aggregate real estate data into a single infrastructure layer.
“If you go to the US and you want to start a proptech business, the best partner to stick with is Zillow,” Ikpoku said, referring to Zillow. “They [Zillow] have the infrastructure that gives you access to everything. For us, we are building that infrastructure for real estate in Africa.”
Unlike listing sites where agents upload properties that may already be sold, Sytemap says only developers can manage their own mapped inventory. Availability is updated at the source.
“Our goal is not really to sell property,” said Ikpoku. “The sale is to keep us going. The goal is to build the infrastructure that makes it easy for anybody to access real estate and verify in real time.”
Every plot mapped and every transaction recorded expands the directory. Over time, the founders believe this private repository could evolve into a de facto reference layer for real estate in Lagos State, particularly in newly developed estates that will become the city’s next residential corridors.
The goal of all this has been to build a private records infrastructure on the blockchain to support existing land registries that the government already maintains, said Ikpoku.
Whether a startup can succeed where public registries have struggled remains uncertain. But as Lagos continues to sprawl and informal allocation practices persist, Sytemap is wagering that the future of property in Nigeria, beyond paper files, will be secured on a map anchored on the blockchain.
