Kenya - Land Governance Country Profile

8. Summary of Challenges, Gaps, Conflicts and Duplications

In summary, the challenges and gaps in land governance are as follows:

• Insecure land tenure, in particular, for the urban and rural poor, for women, for HIV/AIDS-affected households, for pastoralists, and other vulnerable groups in both urban and rural areas;

• There are outdated analogue land registers;

• Conflict over mandate between the NLC and the Ministry of Lands;

• Numerous boundary disputes;

• Insecure tenure for the youth and women;

• Outdated and highly bureaucratic methods of land adjudication;

• Poor land administration characterized by limited access to land information due to poor quality records, extended technical processes, lack of transparency, and user friendliness;

• Weak and/or ineffective mechanisms for fair, timely, affordable, transparent, and accessible resolution of land disputes;

• Poor governance in land administration, management, and dispute resolution;

• Deeply entrenched vested interests have denied the land reform process the much needed political and business support. Many powerful people in politics and business, especially the beneficiaries of the past flawed land regime and those who are angling to benefit from a non-streamlined land sector, see the reforms as a hindrance to personal wealth and power;

• Lack of political goodwill as senior national and county government officials as well as several members of parliament are deeply entangled in land-grabbing and other irregular land allocation cases. Many of them will go any length to ensure the desired land reforms don’t see the light of day;

• The laws that have so far been enacted to effect land reforms have not counted for much because of poor implementation. In fact, even the legislative reforms have lost momentum;

• Weaknesses in terms of resources, capacity and independence among the public institutions charged with managing land. This weakness epitomized by the power struggles and persistent wrangling between the National Land Commission (NLC) and the Ministry of Land, Housing and Urban Development; This has impeded the government’s ability to move ahead in terms of economic development; and

• NLC has also not reached a level of functional independence as it still relies very much on the national government for its staff needs and resource allocation, making it vulnerable to manipulation and control.