Who owns Kenya?
on September 29, 2014
The 2010 constitution prevents foreigners from owning land in Kenya, but as Kenyans have come to find out implementing these provisions are complicated by the ambiguous nature of the law and deliberate moves by the landed class to frustrate the process.
Bill Odidi
When Kenya’s Attorney General told the International Criminal Court in July this year that there were no records to indicate that President Uhuru Kenyatta owned any land in the country, his comments offered a reflection of the mysterious nature of landownership in Kenya.
It is well known that the family of Kenya’s First President, Jomo Kenyatta, father to the current President, owns large tracts of the most productive land particularly in Central Kenya and at the Coast. Forbes Magazine placed the total land owned by Kenyatta and his family at 500,000 acres of prime land spread across the country.
A survey 2014 found that 50% of Kenya’s wealth is in the hands of political families , with the ownership of land providing the core of this wealth.
The skewed ownership of land is dire in a country where only 17% of the land is arable, with the rest mostly arid and semi arid. The Kenya Land Alliance says that more than 65% of this productive land in Kenya is in the hands of only 20% of the population.
The chaotic nature of land records in Kenya obviously suits the political and business elite who would like to maintain secrecy over their ownership of the country’s land. In recent audit, The Lands Ministry discovered that 1.3 million files were lost, misplaced or misfiled.
Ebu fananisha situation yenu na yetu.
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