Community land to be registered once Bill is passed

What you need to know:

  • Community land comprises 67 per cent of the country’s territory and demand for it has gone up recently following discovery of oil and other natural resources.
  • The Bill requires that communities form societies, private companies, trusts and co-operatives in whose name to register their land after identifying boundaries, and agreeing which families, clans or ethnic groups deserve recognition for ownership.
  • The Community Land Bill 2015 is among three Bills that are being debated by stakeholders, experts and members of the National Assemblies at a five-day forum that ends today in Mombasa.

All community land currently held in trust by county governments will be registered once the Community Land Bill is passed.

It will be the first time since independence that communities will be issued with title deeds to secure and preserve their land from arbitrary excisions and allocations without the consent of a clan or ethnic group.

Community land comprises 67 per cent of the country’s territory and demand for it has gone up recently following discovery of oil and other natural resources.

Most of such land is in arid and semi-arid areas, where the economic mainstay is pastoralism. This vast land has always been held in trust by defunct local authorities until promulgation of the new Constitution in August 2010. It is during that time that county governments took over the management of such land.

Without a title deed, communities have found it hard to negotiate with the government whenever a public project like the Standard Gauge Railway or Lappset cuts through their property.

The Bill requires that communities form societies, private companies, trusts and co-operatives in whose name to register their land after identifying boundaries, and agreeing which families, clans or ethnic groups deserve recognition for ownership.

The Community Land Bill 2015 is among three Bills that are being debated by stakeholders, experts and members of the National Assemblies at a five-day forum that ends today in Mombasa.

Others are Land Laws (Amendment) Bill 2015 and the Physical Planning Bill 2015.

The Bills will then be tabled before the National Assembly.

The Community Land Bill 2015 is among the laws that should have been enacted within five years after promulgation of the Constitution, but this did not happen. But Parliament has now extended the timeline by another 12 months.

Governments have in the past found it easier to use community land for public infrastructure programmes, owing to unstructured communal ownership and control tenure systems.

In other cases, some powerful individuals in the community conspire to sell such property without involving others, resulting in conflict.

Two versions of the community land Bills have been published — one developed by a task force appointed by former minister James Orengo and tabled last year before the Senate by Majority Leader Kindiki Kithure; and a government sponsored one now before the National Assembly.

The National Land Commission has pointed out that while the earlier Bill by the Orengo task force prohibited sale or transfer of community land to non-citizens, the one before the National Assembly is silent on this aspect.

“There seems to be a sinister, ulterior motive for this silence,” National Land Commission says in a report on the Bill.

The two Bills also provide different approaches to the management of community land — with the Senate Bill proposing registration of community management committees, community land assemblies, and procedures for their establishment.

The government Bill, however, says the cabinet secretary in charge will make regulations “prescribing the manner and procedures for registration of community land for purposes of this act”.

Section 7 (2) of the government sponsored Bill is likely to generate heated debate.