IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jlands/v7y2018i1p12-d127732.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Community Land Act in Kenya Opportunities and Challenges for Communities

Author

Listed:
  • Liz Alden Wily

    (Van Vollenhoven Institute, Leiden Law School, Box 9520, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands)

Abstract

Kenya is the most recent African state to acknowledge customary tenure as producing lawful property rights, not merely rights of occupation and use on government or public lands. This paper researches this new legal environment. This promises land security for 6 to 10 million Kenyans, most of who are members of pastoral or other poorer rural communities. Analysis is prefaced with substantial background on legal trends continentally, but the focus is on Kenya’s Community Land Act, 2016, as the framework through which customary holdings are to be identified and registered. A main conclusion is that while Kenya’s law is positive and even cutting-edge in respects, legal loopholes place communities at risk of their lands not being as secure as promised ahead of formalization, and at risk of losing some of their most valuable lands during the formalization process. This is mainly due to overlapping claims by the national and local government authorities. Political will to apply the law is also weak. The truism that the law is never enough on its own to secure social change is illustrated. With or without legal protection, the assistance of non-state actors will be needed to help communities secure their lands under formal collective entitlements. The need for judicial interpretation of disputed legal provisions may also be required to ensure new constitutional principles are delivered.

Suggested Citation

  • Liz Alden Wily, 2018. "The Community Land Act in Kenya Opportunities and Challenges for Communities," Land, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-25, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:7:y:2018:i:1:p:12-:d:127732
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/7/1/12/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/7/1/12/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sjaastad, Espen & Bromley, Daniel W., 1997. "Indigenous land rights in sub-Saharan Africa: Appropriation, security and investment demand," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 549-562, January.
    2. Daniel W. Bromley, 1981. "The Role of Land Reform in Economic Development: Policies and Politics: Discussion," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 63(2), pages 399-400.
    3. Lanchih Po, 2008. "Redefining Rural Collectives in China: Land Conversion and the Emergence of Rural Shareholding Co-operatives," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 45(8), pages 1603-1623, July.
    4. Jayne, Thomas S. & Chamberlin, Jordan & Traub, Lulama & Sitko, N. & Muyanga, Milu & Yeboah, Felix & Nkonde, Chewe & Anseeuw, Ward & Chapoto, Anthony & Kachule, Richard, 2015. "Africa's Changing Farmland Ownership: The Rise of the Emergent Investor Farmer," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 212028, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    5. Mwangi, Esther, 2007. "Subdividing the Commons: Distributional Conflict in the Transition from Collective to Individual Property Rights in Kenya's Maasailand," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 815-834, May.
    6. Ruth Hall, 2004. "A Political economy of land reform in South Africa," Review of African Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(100), pages 213-227, June.
    7. Frank F. K. Byamugisha, 2013. "Securing Africa's Land for Shared Prosperity : A Program to Scale Up Reforms and Investments," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 13837, December.
    8. Diana Hunt, 2005. "Some Outstanding Issues in the Debate on External Promotion of Land Privatisation," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 23(2), pages 199-231, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Schürmann, Alina & Kleemann, Janina & Fürst, Christine & Teucher, Mike, 2020. "Assessing the relationship between land tenure issues and land cover changes around the Arabuko Sokoke Forest in Kenya," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    2. Clemens Greiner & David Greven & Britta Klagge, 2021. "Roads to Change: Livelihoods, Land Disputes, and Anticipation of Future Developments in Rural Kenya," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 33(4), pages 1044-1068, August.
    3. Beatrice Adoyo & Urs Schaffner & Stellah Mukhovi & Boniface Kiteme & Purity Rima Mbaabu & Sandra Eckert & Simon Choge & Albrecht Ehrensperger, 2022. "Pathways towards the Sustainable Management of Woody Invasive Species: Understanding What Drives Land Users’ Decisions to Adopt and Use Land Management Practices," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-21, April.
    4. Prince Donkor Ameyaw & Walter Timo de Vries, 2021. "Toward Smart Land Management: Land Acquisition and the Associated Challenges in Ghana. A Look into a Blockchain Digital Land Registry for Prospects," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-22, March.
    5. Myers, Rodd & Fisher, Micah & Monterroso, Iliana & Liswanti, Nining & Maryudi, Ahmad & Larson, Anne M. & Mwangi, Esther & Herawati, Tuti, 2022. "Coordinating forest tenure reform: Objectives, resources and relations in Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal, Peru, and Uganda," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    6. Helene Gichenje & José Muñoz-Rojas & Teresa Pinto-Correia, 2019. "Opportunities and Limitations for Achieving Land Degradation-Neutrality through the Current Land-Use Policy Framework in Kenya," Land, MDPI, vol. 8(8), pages 1-23, July.
    7. Chipofya, Malumbo & Karamesouti, Mina & Schultz, Carl & Schwering, Angela, 2020. "Local Domain Models for Land Tenure Documentation and their Interpretation into the LADM," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    8. Muok, Benard Oula & Mosberg, Marianne & Eriksen, Siri Ellen Hallstrøm & Ong'ech, Dennis Onyango, 2021. "The politics of forest governance in a changing climate: Political reforms, conflict and socio-environmental changes in Laikipia, Kenya," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    9. Liz Alden Wily, 2018. "Collective Land Ownership in the 21st Century: Overview of Global Trends," Land, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-26, May.
    10. Alden Wily, Liz, 2018. "Risks to the sanctity of community lands in Kenya. A critical assessment of new legislation with reference to forestlands," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 661-672.
    11. Lara Domínguez & Colin Luoma, 2020. "Decolonising Conservation Policy: How Colonial Land and Conservation Ideologies Persist and Perpetuate Indigenous Injustices at the Expense of the Environment," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-22, February.
    12. Senda, Trinity S. & Robinson, Lance W. & Gachene, Charles K.K. & Kironchi, Geoffrey, 2022. "Formalization of communal land tenure and expectations for pastoralist livelihoods," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    13. Asiama, Kwabena Obeng & Voss, Winrich & Bennett, Rohan & Rubanje, Innocent, 2021. "Land consolidation activities in Sub-Saharan Africa towards the agenda 2030: A tale of three countries," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gottlieb, Charles & Grobovšek, Jan, 2019. "Communal land and agricultural productivity," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 135-152.
    2. Ghebru, Hosaena & Pitoro, Raul & Woldeyohannes, Sileshi, 2015. "Customary tenure and innovative measures of safeguarding land rights in Africa: The community land initiative (iniciativa de terras comunitárias) in Mozambique:," IFPRI discussion papers 1484, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    3. Chris D. Arnot & Martin K. Luckert & Peter C. Boxall, 2011. "What Is Tenure Security? Conceptual Implications for Empirical Analysis," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 87(2), pages 297-311.
    4. Chaoran Chen, 2017. "Untitled Land, Occupational Choice, and Agricultural Productivity," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 91-121, October.
    5. Lenyeletse V. Basupi & Claire H. Quinn & Andrew J. Dougill, 2017. "Pastoralism and Land Tenure Transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa: Conflicting Policies and Priorities in Ngamiland, Botswana," Land, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-17, December.
    6. Daniel Ayalew Ali & Stefan Dercon & Madhur Gautam, 2011. "Property rights in a very poor country: tenure insecurity and investment in Ethiopia," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 42(1), pages 75-86, January.
    7. Thomas Vendryes, 2014. "Peasants Against Private Property Rights: A Review Of The Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 971-995, December.
    8. Bouquet, Emmanuelle, 2009. "State-Led Land Reform and Local Institutional Change: Land Titles, Land Markets and Tenure Security in Mexican Communities," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 1390-1399, August.
    9. Clemence Rusenga, 2019. "The Agribusiness Model in South African Land Reform? Land Use Implications for the Land Reform Beneficiaries," Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, Centre for Agrarian Research and Education for South, vol. 8(3), pages 440-461, December.
    10. Ilia Murtazashvili & Jennifer Murtazashvili, 2015. "Anarchy, self-governance, and legal titling," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 162(3), pages 287-305, March.
    11. Ali, Daniel Ayalew & Deininger, Klaus & Goldstein, Markus, 2014. "Environmental and gender impacts of land tenure regularization in Africa: Pilot evidence from Rwanda," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 262-275.
    12. Eustace Njagi Kithumbu & Julius M. Huho & Humphrey Omondi, 2017. "Environmental Determinants of Choice of Sustainability Strategies Adopted by Group Ranches in Samburu County, Kenya," International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science (2147-4478), Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 6(3), pages 24-32, April.
    13. Smith, Robert E., 2004. "Land Tenure, Fixed Investment, and Farm Productivity: Evidence from Zambia's Southern Province," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(10), pages 1641-1661, October.
    14. Jérémie GIGNOUX & Karen MACOURS & Liam WREN-LEWIS, 2015. "Impact of land administration programs on agricultural productivity and rural development: existing evidence, challenges and new approaches," Review of Agricultural and Environmental Studies - Revue d'Etudes en Agriculture et Environnement, INRA Department of Economics, vol. 96(3), pages 467-498.
    15. Klaus Deininger & Daniel Ayalew Ali & Takashi Yamano, 2008. "Legal Knowledge and Economic Development: The Case of Land Rights in Uganda," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 84(4), pages 593-619.
    16. Ghebru, Hosaena, 2015. "Is There a Merit to the Continuum Tenure Approach? A Case of Demand for Land Rights Formulation in Rural Mozambique," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 211683, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    17. Bambio, Yiriyibin & Bouayad Agha, Salima, 2018. "Land tenure security and investment: Does strength of land right really matter in rural Burkina Faso?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 130-147.
    18. Festus A. Asaaga, 2021. "Building on “Traditional” Land Dispute Resolution Mechanisms in Rural Ghana: Adaptive or Anachronistic?," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-17, February.
    19. Holden, Stein T. & Otsuka, Keijiro, 2014. "The roles of land tenure reforms and land markets in the context of population growth and land use intensification in Africa," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 88-97.
    20. David Asante Edwin & Evam Kofi Glover & Edinam K. Glover, 2020. "When Tradition Meets Modernity in Land Registration: Evidence from Dagbon, Ghana," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(11), pages 1-28, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:7:y:2018:i:1:p:12-:d:127732. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.