Politicians will make promises touching on any sector. Then they will give you a “know-it-all” look, regardless of the implications the promises may have to existing policy and law. It therefore helps to take a step back and appreciate that these promises could end up influencing development, and may drive changes in policy and law. Sectoral experts must therefore keep their ears close to political leaders, to parliament and to county assemblies. Then they may be able to influence ideas and discourse, and perhaps strike meaningful compromises for progressive development.

Populist promises on land

Those who have been paying good attention may for instance have picked up some of the riveting election promises made touching on the land sector. There’s been promises to buy out farms that belong to absentee owners, subdivide and allocate them to the landless. There’s been promises convert ADC farms to settlement schemes for settlement of persons. These are bold commitments. Quite obviously, they are popular with the targeted voter baskets. Indeed, our laws have provisions that would allow the purchase of land for settlement of landless people. The Land Act establishes a Land Settlement Fund for such purposes. This Fund isn’t quite new and has been used to buy land for the resettlement of people in the past, only it was differently named and managed prior to the new constitution.

Land fragmentation

Recent studies by the land commission show that over 300, 000 families have been settled on about 3.1 million acres of settlement scheme land since 1962. Our population in 1962 was about 8.6 million people. It is currently perhaps over 55 million. Records in the Ministry of Lands reflect that the total number of titles issued so far has just gone above 11 million. Most of these have been derived from the adjudication of the former trust lands, if you wish, ancestral land. With our current population levels, any focus on the settlement of people on land seized from absentee landowners, or even purchased from the market, may only fuel further demand. Arable land in Kenya was reported to be about 5,800,000 hectares by year 2018. This is just over 14 million acres. Given the number of titles already issued, most of this must be under private ownership. Therefore, while the strategy to buy land and settle people may help in a few situations, it cannot be effectively used to satiate Kenya’s current landless population. We would require more land than we have.

Policy emphasis on access

Indeed, while appreciating the role and need for the settlement of people, Kenya’s land policy decries the declining productivity of land on account of the fragmentation of arable land. A report from a study undertaken by national land commission on the effects of land fragmentation on land use and food security in Kenya released in March this year vindicate this concern. Rapid urbanization has also claimed quite a lot of arable land in the urban and rural counties of Kenya, further reducing our stock of agricultural land. Therefore a key strategy forwards should be to protect, and optimize agricultural production on any remaining public and private land in Kenya.

In appreciating today’s circumstances, Kenya’s land policy lays deliberate emphasis, not on landownership, but on access to land. Access for beneficial occupation and use of land such as shelter, food production or commercial purposes. This should guide our development path and political commitments. However, other interventions would help to expand access to land, and its use. These should inform commitments by future governments and should be good fodder for political players.

Sectional properties

In urban areas for instance, the concept of sectional properties, which enables the ownership of individual units on high-rise developments, has the potential to tremendously escalate ownership and access rights to office and residential use, and even improve the generation of land revenue for most county governments. Official bottlenecks in county and lands offices have continued to minimize the uptake of sectional units through this concept. Since urban spaces will hold the bulk of our population forwards, the deepening of the uptake of this concept should be a key target area for intervention by any serious future government.

To improve tenure rights and livelihoods for the many Kenyans residing and doing business in the informal areas of our urban spaces, the Kenya Informal Settlements Improvement Project (KISIP) should be another priority area. This project, which has been rolled out to towns spread out within a third of Kenya’s counties, helps to strengthen tenure security, introduce planning and improve infrastructure and service delivery. Beneficiary settlements have had roads improved, street lighting done and water, sewer and drainage services provided. The project therefore gives occupational confidence, improves livelihoods and gives dignity to Kenyans in these spaces. Indeed, political route planners ensure that itineraries for their principals prioritise meetings in these vote rich spaces. The KISIP project, and any complementary ones, should therefore inform government priorities.

Community land

Community land in Kenya strands across 24 counties, and constitutes over 60 per cent of our land. Yet, most of this land remains unregistered and unprotected. Tenure rights within such spaces therefore remain precarious, and difficult to define and protect. In 2016, Kenya enacted a law to enable the recognition, protection and registration of such land. Regulations to this Community Land Act were gazetted in 2017, making the law ready for implementation. The identification, demarcation and registration of ancestral land rights in these spaces, which are largely arid and semi-arid, will make it possible for the resident communities to negotiate for compensation where projects affect their land, negotiate with investors keen on exploiting resources on it and manage any transactions over it. Bringing this vast land on the register should be a key area of focus for future governments. This will however call for major commitments to procure the required technical and financial resources. This would nonetheless pay big dividends forwards, as it would open up, connect and integrate the affected economies.

Deep integrity issues

The millions of titles issued hitherto, and those yet to be, form the basis of the routine transactions moved through the survey, planning and lands offices spread across the country. Unfortunately, big numbers of records and service seekers are fertile breeding grounds for frustrations and rent seeking. Integrity issues in most of these offices therefore run very deep. A plan to drive a holistic culture and attitude change in all will be necessary. A plan to ensure the improvement of the support infrastructure will necessary. The newly introduced online management system, ardhisasa, will be helpful as it will remove the need for physical interactions and reduce transaction times. Future governments should sort out the policy and technical issues already flagged out by users, and ensure the optimal use of this critical system. The review of the national land policy, which was due in 2019, and the successful resolution of the historical injustice claims pending before the land commission, should be other areas of interest.

Dated: 22^nd June, 2022