My organization has been trying to procure land in different parts of Kenya for setting up field-monitoring centers. More than the typical issues of bureaucracy, corruption and such, it is the issue of muddled up histories for each and every piece of land that makes procuring a small piece of land such a contentious matter.
The majority of land in Kenya is owned by the Government. As a norm Government buildings and properties DO NOT have official title deeds.
The reasons for this are two-fold – the Government’s supreme authority by law precludes anyone questioning ownership of the land by the government – a gazetted government notice is considered sufficient to define allocation (this is not unusual and is the case in many countries, though in Kenya this appears happen without clear demarcation of land boundaries).
The second reason is possibly motivated by vested interests pursuing dubious causes- common examples where government land has been quietly fenced, parceled and sold off as private property by corrupt agents within the bureaucratic system.
There are other complications – some land is classified as Community Land. To use this land, say, if you want to build a school or dispensary, you approach the Community committee managing the land – the committee convenes and votes, and decides that the land is approved for the requested usage. There are no title deeds involved here, just the committee’s word, recorded in the minutes of a meeting (scraps of paper, containing unintelligible writings).
Then there are cases of presidential orders and decrees which change land allocations and land usage. The president can land by helicopter in a part of the country, and make a pronouncement that a piece of land presently allocated to Department A is now under Department B. And the status of the land changes again. There is usually little in terms of a paper-trail or documentation for any of this.
A good example is one of the plots of land I had identified for use by our project. This land was under the Ministry of Agriculture. While going through the procedures of procuring the land, it turned out that the president had visited the area a few months earlier and declared the land as being under the Ministry of Defence ! There was no documentation available to trace any of this.
Much like ancient ancient histories in Africa, the land records appear to be verbal and based on human memories and word of mouth.
The travails with the particular land plot I speak of, became even more murky, when the local community, claimed it was Community Land, and produced minutes of meetings, and gazette notices as proof of their claim. In response the Ministry of Agriculture produced an “allocation letter” for the land (a bureaucratic FUD that is a precursor to getting a title deed).
The Ministry of Defence then came up with a letter from the Office of the President, declaring a transfer of allocation. Just when I thought there could be no more claimants, out from the woodwork emerged private citizens carrying letters of allocation for parts of the same land !
Who is authentic? Who is real here? It is impossible to tell. Probably everyone is right in their own way.
So how were people and institutions managing until now? The answer to this is simple.
Kenya is a country where property rights are not clearly established – even with legal documents like title-deeds, or historical/ancestral claims. In a situation where there is an absence of legal protection to property rights, corruption is a natural substitute for bad governance. It is cheaper in almost every case to engage in corrupt behavior than follow legal transactions.
Note:
The economic growth of the past few years in Kenya, one wonders, was it in spite of the corruption or was it fueled by the multi million dollar corruption scandals ?
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