By JECKONIA OTIENO

Kilifi resident Pietro Cannabio knows too well the pain of owning land without having any access to it. He owns a seven-acre piece of land in Kilifi – plot L.R. No 17835 – that has since been transferred to another person who subdivided and sold it.

He says the original title, CR No 35336, has allegedly been fraudulently switched to a generic title, CR No 37185, under a different owner, who sub-divided the parcel into seven portions and sold them off.

Cases like this could be a thing of the past if a proposed new approach to land management, the cadastral system, is effected. This is a system that depends on an official register of the ownership, extent and value of real property in a given area, used as a basis of taxation.

Speaking during her vetting before she was approved as Cabinet Secretary for Lands and Housing, Charity Ngilu argued a cadastral system would ensure all information about land parcels can be accessed at the click of the mouse.

This will be complemented with geo-referencing (links to Online maps from the documentation about the parcel) as opposed loads of paperwork and physical boundary marks that define the lands sector. She plans to introduce such comprehensive registers to end disputes about real property. The land question remains an emotive issue in the country, posing a headache to technocrats and politicians in equal measure. Fraudulent acquisition and land conflicts are some of the problems that the sector wants to solve using new technology.

Ndung’u report

The Ndung’u Report on Irregular and Illegal Land Acquisition identifies corruption as the major problem leading to the loss of public resources valued in excess of Sh18.4 billion. Mention of the report’s implementation – or lack of it - popped up quite often during Ngilu’s vetting.

The Constitution of the National Land Commission is expected to bring changes to the sector as it works to implement the National Land Policy, which stipulates a new way of dealing with land matters like mapping.

Dr Mohammed Swazuri, who chairs the National Lands Commission, says plans are underway to start mapping out the whole county to get precise records. This will involve application of the cadastral technology.

“We plan to map out the entire country using modern technology,” says Swazuri.

“All parcels will be marked with the names of the owners, inhabitants, co-ordinates and value.”

He says this is an action backed by the law and will be the start of solving the country’s numerous land problems.

The National Land Policy states that a comprehensive, modern and computerised land information management system shall be established, and the information made available to members of the public in a form and language that they can easily understand and readily use.

Swazuri asserts: “The Constitution is very clear on matters of land; what remains is implementation.”

Land rights activist Odenda Lumumba says with will and support of the Government and the public, the National Lands Commission will solve the quagmire that characterises the lands sector.

Director of Physical Planning in the Ministry of Lands Augustine Masinde says implementation must be systematic.

The national cadastral system seeks to have a national planning system that cuts across many sectors that entwine, so that they work in synergy.

The National Land Policy states that the Government shall modernise the infrastructural apparatus for land delivery through computerisation and use of electronically linked systems. It shall also create human resource capacity to operate the modernised infrastructure.

The system entails detailing aspects such as ownership, tenure, precise location, dimensions, cultivations and value. These aspects are necessary if fast tracking of land transactions are to be realised.

Registered parcels

Masinde expounds: “It is a system or framework that contains attributes of all registered land parcels which can easily be accessed.”

One of the advantages of the system is that at the click of a button, a person is able to access details about a parcel of land anywhere within the country.

“It is possible to tell the previous owner, the number of subdivisions, the dimensions, location and a rough estimate of its worth,” says Masinde.

One of the biggest headaches that face physical planning in Kenya is disregard of plans as manifested in slums like Kibera, Mathare and Korogocho in Nairobi among other chaotic estates in the country. The new system is expected to solve cases of double allocation, long hours for searches laced with underhand deals and fake certificates and search documents from dingy backstreet offices.

To achieve this all land in Kenya will have to be surveyed and geo-referenced using modern technology.

Mr Masinde states that all Government departments will have to work on it as a team so that a clear system for land use is established.

“This will prevent scenarios where a department builds a road while another comes and digs it later on to lay pipes for water or fiber for communication,” says Masinde. “All these players are to be involved in the mapping and planning (so they don’t undo each other’s work).”

All information pertaining to land will therefore be found in the National Spatial Data Infrastructure.

Masinde says that when land reforms began in earnest in the late 1990s, most quarters dismissed the technical teams that would burn the midnight oil to craft policies but they withstood the opposition.

“I still believe that the country will be mapped and digitised if the will and capacity is there,” he says.

The director of surveys in the Lands Ministry Ephantus Murage says geo-referencing will solve all the boundary issues. This method will ensure that land is defined using coordinates as opposed to use of physical boundaries like hedges, rivers or fences which can easily be changed.

Murage cites an example of fraudulent sale of land in areas like the coastline where people are shown land when water has receded only to realise that they have been cheated into buying land in the sea.

“With geo-referencing,” he says, “a person only needs to have the (Global Positioning System) co-ordinates in the pocket and it can be traced from wherever. You do not have to be physically there to be shown the land.”

Protected land

This system will reduce cases where people have been conned into buying other people’s land, purchasing seasonal riverbeds or protected land.

There are cases where files go missing after deals have been concluded by land hawks. Examples are files from where land problems abound like the Tana Delta and much of the coastal area.

Cannabio’s case reveals the depth of the problem facing some landowners in proving ownership of property.

Investigations with the Lands ministry confirm the property is legally his, but this has not helped him recover it from those who were tricked into buying it about four years ago. This could have been avoided if attempts to sell the land had been blocked.

“A particular parcel can have only one set of co-ordinates, hence any buyer will be able to see what they are buying,” Murage states. This, combined with the cadaster system, will see fast and fraud-free land transactions.

Currently, people have to sift through bales of paperwork to get a transaction done, all the while hoping they do not get swindled. Mr Murage is upbeat that this will be achieved in three years time.

Swazuri also states that impunity will be dealt with decisively in order to restore full order in the lands sector.

“When one or two people are charged and jailed, those tempted (to conduct fraudulent deals) will have to toe the line,” he says. With proper implementation, funding and capacity building, Kenya might just be headed the right direction in solving land matters.