Resource information
This research paper evaluates land tenure and land registration process in Maua
Location of Meru North district of Kenya. It comes at a time when Kenyans are
pressurizing the government increasingly to issue title deeds not only at the Coast
province but also all over the country (GoK -Ministry of Lands). Maua Location is of
concern owing to the fact that the land registration process has been on going since
1966. This is a long time (43 years) for the land registration process not to have been
completed, hence the researcher's interest in the location. Other regions of the country
where land registration has taken long include the Coastal region of Kenya, the Rift
Valley and Nyanza provinces as opposed to central and western provinces where this
delay was not experienced as it was done immediately after independence. (From 1994
to 1997, the Location has been subdivided into six locations, thus; Antobochiu-1994,
Luluma-1997, Kithetu-1997, Miori-1997, Nguyuyu-1994 and Maua-1994). For purposes
of this research, all these locations are combined into one and referred to as Maua
Location (See figure 4). Landowners have not yet received their title deeds and this
delay has occasioned economic, social, political, and environmental problems. This
study examines the different factors that have affected the land registration process
such as politics and governance, contradictory policies and institutional framework.
Study objectives are identification of relationships between current land policies and the
pace of land registration, determination of whether the current land dispute resolution
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methods are related to incidences of land cases and identification of the relationship(s)
between land subdivision and environmental degradation in the Location.
The study shows how introduction of modern land dispute resolution methods as
opposed to traditional methods has impacted on the land registration process. This
research examines the environmental parameters associated with land registration in
Maua Location, and then offers solutions and recommendations to policy makers and
others on how to address the issues resu-.lting from land registration in the location. The study consists of five chapters. The background in Chapter 1 is on various legislations
that were introduced by the colonial administration (to replace customary land tenure)
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and adopted at independence for land registration and their various shortcomings. The
chapter contains Statement of the research problem, justification of the research,
literature review, and objectives of the study, the hypotheses and the conceptual
framework. The scope and limitations of the study is also contained in this chapter.
Climate and topography, population, temperature, resource potential, vegetation, winds
and relative humidity of the study area are addressed in Chapter 2.
The methodology in Chapter 3 included Stratified random sampling and direct
observations. Data was from both primary and secondary sources; and was of
quantitative nature. Structured questionnaires were administered to the different
respondents and focused group discussions were held. On the other hand, specific
quantitative techniques of data analysis using SPSS such as Cross Tabulation and the
non- parametric Chi- square (X2) test were used. The contributions of this research are
highlighted in the findings which are presented in graphs, tables and pie .charts. In
conclusion in Chapter 5, the study shows that conflicts resulting from institutions
dealing with land matters are resolvable in nature with a positive effect on the pace of
land registration and modern methods of dispute resolution leading to high incidences
of land disputes. The pace of land registration also affects environmental
conservation; registered land owners want to protect their land from natural and
artificial disasters and politicians tend to cause delays in land registration.
