Business Daily (Nairobi) | 19 October 2009
By JIM ONYANGO
The government is moving to ease challenges faced by new investors in acquiring land for development under a scheme targeting idle land in towns and rural areas.
The Ministry of Lands has already allocated Sh1.5 billion to the scheme intended at creating a land bank in which investors can tap as the country steps up the drive to attract capital to major towns in the Rift Valley, Western and Nyanza provinces.
But the programme has already met with resistance from some quarters who see it as sanctioning land-grabs.
The government, through the programme, will repossess at a fee land it allocated to influential people in muddled deals that started after independence in 1963.
Bring back memories
The plan to create a land bank also brings back memories of the fury that greeted proposals by the Qatar government to buy 40,000 hectares in Tana River for agricultural purposes in exchange for $3.5 billion for the Kenya government to build a second deep-water port in Lamu.
Gulf states and Asian countries have failed in their effort to build food security abroad through snapping up of large parcels of arable land in the wake of rising food prices.
South Korea failed in its attempt to buy a third of arable land in Madagascar early this year for agricultural purposes.
Land rights
Land rights campaigners say the government is within its mandate to acquire land, which it can then put to good use such as settling the landless or for putting up investments.
“The government can also cede land to foreign investors from the land bank. That is not bad. The problem we have in Africa is that governments give land to foreign investors and food produced from those lands is exported and does not benefit the locals,” said Ms Catherine Gatundu, the deputy coordinator of the Nakuru based Kenya Land Alliance, a civil society organisation for land rights campaigners.
The move to buy land from the public comes ahead of the tabling in Parliament of the draft National Land Policy which was approved by the Cabinet in June.
The policy paper provides for direct funding of compulsory acquisition of land already targeted by the government for either public projects, investments or for settling the landless.
On Thursday, Lands minister James Orengo met the Parliamentary Departmental Committee on Land and Natural Resources to lobby them to support the new policy intended at reviewing the existing Settlement Fund Trustee with a view to strengthening and widening its mandate.
The expanded mandate would include acquisition of land for settlement of poor landless Kenyans, creation of a land bank to cater for future land needs, development of infrastructure and public facilities in government expropriated lands, and compensation for land set aside for public oriented projects such as conservation of the environment and cultural sites.
In a public announcement this week, the Lands ministry said it was targeting for acquisition tracts of arable parcels measuring not less than 100 acres in any region of the country.
“We have been approached by several potential investors, but the government has realised it doesn’t have sufficient land for investors seeking to put their money in the country.
“We will buy lands as long as they measure not less than 100 acres,” Ms said Mary Ombara, the head of communications at the Ministry of Lands.
“The process of allocating land was mismanaged in the past because of lack of regulations.”
The ministry will in November pay land owners who have agreed to sell their land to the government.
Land economists say the government must watch out on people who illegally acquired land and who may want to cash in on the offer.
“It appears the government has good intentions to create a land bank where investors can get land from. We should aim to sell land to investors at a reduced price so as to attract investments into the country,” said Prof Washington Olima, a lecturer at the department of real estate and construction management at the University of Nairobi.
Attempts to buy parcels of land in the Rift Valley and Western province flopped in June when land owners who were approached with offers refused to sell to the government because of the low price quoted.
The Lands ministry has devised a new method of purchasing land — through public tender process.
The permanent secretary in the ministry of lands, Ms Dorothy Angote, has asked land owners wishing to sell more than 100 acres of their land to write to the government expressing interest to sell the property.
Some of the land will be used to settle people who were uprooted from their homes during the post election violence following the 2007 disputed presidential election.
Land issues remain thorny in Kenya, especially among minority communities and vulnerable groups, who claim that historical injustices have denied them the right to land based resources.
On the other hand, the government is under pressure to settle elsewhere families that carved out parts of the expansive Mau forest for habitation.
Environmental experts have blamed the ongoing drought to the destruction of the Mau forest — a water catchment area that traverses part of the Rift Valley province.
The government’s land buy-back scheme follows a Cabinet decision in June that approved the National Land Policy for submission to Parliament as a Sessional Paper.
If approved by the national assembly, the policy will provide guidelines to the relevant sectoral policies and programmes that deal with and affect land in the country.
The Cabinet said the policy would provide a platform for addressing issues such as access to land, land use planning, environmental degradation, land conflicts and injustices, unplanned proliferation of informal settlements and land information management.
Informal settlements
The policy, to be tabled in Parliament when the House resumes in November, provides a platform for addressing issues such as access to land, land use planning, environmental degradation, land conflicts and injustices, unplanned proliferation of informal settlements and land information management.
The Cabinet extensively debated the policy whose goal is to facilitate and create opportunities for Kenyans to secure access to land, but is also cognisant of the fact that not all people can be granted individual freehold rights to land.
The policy is critical in providing a new dispensation in the land sector and in the way Kenyans perceive land administration and management.
It will seek to protect private land rights by providing for the creation of the Community Lands Board to handle claims involving land at the grassroots levels.
If the policy is passed by the national assembly, land issues requiring special intervention such as historical injustices, land rights of minority communities and vulnerable groups will be addressed through the participation of such groups in decision making over land and land based resources.
