Reform and counter-reform in Kenya's land governance

Fashioned within conquest, Kenya’s current system of land governance was designed to facilitate land expropriation for the few and powerful. Post-colonial elites never fundamentally reformed this system of concentrated legal and administrative power over land and continue to benefit from it. This article explores both recent efforts at land governance reform and the numerous ways that counter-reform resistance is occurring and currently gaining the upper hand. The authors argue that powerful networks of beneficiaries create a strong system of control and exclusion around land, producing a path dependency against reform. The challenge for reformers is to overcome these powerful forces arrayed against change with creative mobilisation strategies, leveraging not only the 2010 Constitution and the courts but also public outrage and stronger civil society organisation. Overall, an important reform struggle in Kenya is just beginning, the outcome uncertain and the stakes for the country’s future very high.