Monitoring Land Administration and Management in Kenya: Inclusive Land Governance

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Context and background

Land Monitoring is critical for continuous implementation of land reforms and general growth and development in the sector. It guides the deployment of policy by identifying and highlighting the fundamental problems affecting sustainable land development.

Kenya in the recent past, has been involved in land monitoring activities including Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF) by the World Bank and the Global Land Indicators Initiative (GLII) by UN Habitat. The reporting under these monitoring activities have been affected by  unavailability of data.

To address the existing gaps, Kenya, with support from IGAD, undertook a National Land Monitoring exercise in 2022. The exercise sought to establish baseline land related information on the six indicators namely: policy development/reform; land tenure security; land conflicts and disputes; land administration services; capacity of land administration systems and sustainable land use.

Goal and Objectives:

The objectives of the exercise were: to establish the existence of comprehensive policies and extent to which the policy formulation process is consultative; Determine the extent of land tenure security and proportion of women and men with legally recognized documentation; Establish the extent of land  disputes and the access to effective resolution; Establish the efficiency of land administration services and generation of revenue by government from the land services; and Determine the capacity of land administration systems and determine sustainability of land use.

Methodology:

The exercise was carried out by a multi-agency National Land Monitoring

 Working Group (NLMWG) whose membership was drawn from technical staff from the various Government Agencies in Kenya. The basis of data collection was a land monitoring framework with the six indicators areas. Secondary data from administrative sources was collected and key informant interviews were carried among the land registrars, surveyors, physical planners, valuers, land adjudicators and judiciary registrars. The quantitative data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics while qualitative data was analyzed using content analysis, narrative analysis and framework analysis.

Results:

The exercise established existence of a comprehensive National Land Policy (Sessional Paper No. 3 of 2009), which was under review. The total area of land under cadastral maps/land information system was approximately 11,288,916.12 hectares, representing 19.38 percent of the total land area.

The exercise further established that 1.58 percent of the total filed court cases were land related in 2021/2022. In the same year, 2.17 percent and 2.60 percent of resolved and pending respectively of the total court cases were land related.   The exercise further established that forest land decreased by 0.5 percent (255,851 hectares) between the year 2008 and 2018. The data indicated that 10 out of 47 Counties (21.27 percent) have prepared and approved County Physical and Land Use Plans.

The exercise recommended the need to dis-aggregate land related data at the point of collection, design and fund new strategies for collection and managing data, develop National Land use/Land cover mapping and modernize land information management to allow for easier collection, collation, storage and dissemination of land information.

Keywords

Land Monitoring, Land Tenure, Land Disputes, Land Governance, Data