Kenya is well placed to implement broad land reforms

A deliberate injustice, or perhaps an inadvertent omission, is happening as we watch. The local media may be harshly judged by history for the omission. If the ordinary mind cannot figure it, our media should. Over the last two decades, Kenya has spent billions of shillings compiling a land policy, a new constitution, new laws and various reports on land. These have all been aimed at driving comprehensive land reforms whose main impact will be political stability and social-economic development in Kenya.

Policy, constitutional and legal frameworks available

By last year, Kenya was ready to begin implementing land reforms in earnest based on our land policy, the constitution and the new laws……the Environment and Land Court Act, the Land Act, the Land Registration Act and the National Land Commission Act. And after quite some battles, a national land commission was established and sworn into office earlier this year. It now sits in Ardhi House and is reportedly currently receiving about twenty public complaints daily on mundane issues like delayed or denied searches, duplication of titles, grabbed public land and corruption by land officials. The land commission is busy trying to establish a competent secretariat before embarking on rolling out its County offices and the various components of land reforms.

The policy, constitution and laws are only guiding documents. Their intended impacts can only be achieved through sustained implementation. This implementation will only be achieved through institutions such as the Ministry responsible for Lands (now Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development), the national land commission and its respective County offices. For them to effectively do so, they need adequate funding. Without this, land reforms won’t be. It’s that simple! Government only works through policies, laws, programmes and budgets.

National land commission allocated inadequate funding for year 2013/14

In a recent media brief, the Land Development and Governance Institute informed that only 241 million has been voted for use by the national land commission for the year 2013/14. In a commission of nine members, a CEO and the technical officers to be soon recruited, this is even not enough for the year’s salaries. That then means that the commission will be left with no money for implementing programmes, else it has to painfully walk with a begging bowl to willing donors. Moreover, the Ministry of Lands itself, which too must play a key role in implementing land reforms, has received its routine budgetary allocation. The Ministry has received no dramatic increment from the past. Therefore, with a routine budget, it will only do business-as-usual stuff and not delve into land reforms.

Yet, our Sessional Paper No 3 on the national land policy provides that the effective implementation of land reforms in Kenya calls for an infusion of about ten billion Kenya shillings for the first six years. In practical terms, 2013/14 will be the first year of serious implementation. Given that this is the year in which staff recruitment and the establishment of the commission’s national and county offices will be done, one would therefore expect about two to two and half billion to be specifically allocated to land reforms for this first year while the second and subsequent years could enjoy reducing allocations, based on progress made annually.

Media, Parliament and stakeholders should address the funding gaps

If Parliament and stakeholders do not address this anomaly, Kenya can as well resign to a frustrated future with land reforms. They just won’t be. We will talk, write more laws and regulations but the lives of Kenyans won’t change without institutions with enough technical capacity and financial resources for implementation. This is the bottom line and if our media and stakeholders continue to miss this, then we shall have largely lost our previous investments in the land sector. The land chapter of the TJRC report which has landed with a thud doesn’t bring us anything new on land reforms. The names and issues it highlights have all been addressed either in the Ndung’u report, the land policy, the constitution or new land laws. But for its extra depth, it will help as background material when the land commission embarks on implementing aspects relating to historical land injustices and the recovery of public land as provided in the constitution and the national land commission Act.

Let’s therefore refuse to be diverted and numbed into recounting the now obvious land question whose solution can only be achieved through implementing the existing policy, constitution and laws. Let the Jubilee government allocate adequate money for implementation. Its manifesto promised as much and its members in Parliament and Senate must act to close the gap!