The International Land Coalition (ILC) has commissioned this present report to analyze the illegal/irregular acquisition of land by Kenya’s elites to ascertain the types of land affected, the processes used to acquire land, and the profiles of the perpetrators, as well as to identify the victims and the impacts of land grabbing. The report is drawn largely from the Kenya Land Alliance (KLA)’s series “Unjust Enrichment: The Making of Land Grabbing Millionaires”,

The women Land Rights Project is a project of Kenya Land Alliance that aims at actualisation Women land and property rights, as provided in the Constitution of Kenya, 2013 and as a means towards poverty alleviation. This considering the fact that, in Kenya where the foundation of most communities is Agriculture and livestock production, women contribute up to 80% of workforce yet they only hold 1% of registered land in their names and around 5-6% of registered titles are held in joint names (Kenya Land Alliance, 2013).

The consultancy required a Project Completion Report of DFID’s support to the Kenya Land Alliance (KLA) and advice to DFID on possible future activities that would support pro poor land reform in Kenya. This final report has been prepared following the comments on the draft report by the Hon Kimunya, Minister of Lands and Settlement, and senior managers in the Ministry, the responsible DFID-Kenya officials and KLA’s Co-ordinator.

Through this Land Update, KLA appreciates that for the first time in the history of Kenya a comprehensive Draft National Land Policy has been formulated.We therefore urge all Kenyans and the general public to read, debate and contribute to the finalization of the National Land Policy. This is because the final National Land Policy will provide the basis for the review and harmonization of the existing laws and enacting of new ones to facilitate the achievement of the objectives set out in the overall national development policy framework, Kenya Vision 2030

For a long time sub-Saharan Africa has been considered to have abundant and underutilized land than any other continent. On the contrary, recent studies show that many rural Africans live in increasingly densely populated areas where all arable land is allocated or under cultivation. This has led to a long-term decline in farm size and reduced fallows.

This booklet reveals that women only got 103,043 titles representing 10.3 percent, while men got 865,095 titles representing 86.5 percent of the total. The glaring disparity is made clear when looked at against the actual land sizes and titled for women against men. The data sample shows that out of 10,129,704 hectares of land titled between 2013 and 2017 women got 163,253 hectares representing a paltry 1.62 while men got 9,903,304 hectares representing 97.76 percent.

A majority of the Kenyan population live in rural areas accessing land and natural resources through customary systems and institutions that operate largely outside the mainstream legal framework of land administration. Although there are clear provisions in the Constitution and the Trust Land Act on management of trust land there appears to be an unwritten policy on the part of government that sees community land as land that is not owned but rather is available for County Councils and government to appropriate through the setting apart procedure

The National Land Policy in Kenya: Critical Public Land Issues and Policy Statements is a guide to steer the debate and eventual formulation of a National Land Policy and legislative framework that will address issues of management and administration of public land in Kenya.

The KLA proposed constitutional principles on land reform as captured in the constitutional draft have become more pronounced with the approach of General Elections and the transition that is expected to see the departure of President Moi from leadership. We therefore, detest the frantic efforts to go to the forthcoming elections before adopting the Ghai draft constitution, because that will be endangering the aroused expectation that at long last we are on the road to sorting out land problems we have lived with since independence.

This analysis and recommendations stem from USAID/Kenya’s request for an assessment of Kenya’s draft National Land Policy (dNLP).4 It was conducted under the global task order: Property Rights and Resource Governance Program, a mechanism designed and supervised by USAID-EGAT’s Land Resources Management Team under the Office of Natural Resources Management.

The Kenya Land Alliance (KLA) is a focal point for information sharing and networking among those pressing for land reform in Kenya. It was formed in 1999 by members of civil society to propose reforms both to the Commission on the Review of Land Laws, appointed by the President, and the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission, appointed by Parliament. Over the last two years, the KLA has coordinated a programme of research on land issues in Kenya by member organisations

The first set of the land laws were enacted in 2012 in line with the timelines outlined in the Constitution of Kenya 2010. In keeping with the spirit of the constitution, the Land Act, Land Registration Act and the national Land Commission Act respond to the requirements of Articles 60, 61, 62, 67 & 68 of the Constitution.