Agriculture
Kenyan land reform shows few positive results

afrol.com, 12 November  -  The Kenyan practice of individualizing public land has created more people without rights to land and has generated new types of disputes over ownership, a new report concludes. Further, giving private ownership titles does not appear to have had much effect on credit as very few people use titles for loans, nor does it give positive environmental effects. 

These are the main conclusions of a new study by Karuti Kanyinga, Re-distribution from above. The Politics of Land Rights and Squatting in Coastal Kenya, published by the Nordic Africa Institute. 

Kanyinga, basing his studies in coastal Kenya, criticizes the proponents of the individualization of land titles in Africa. They "have hinged their position primarily on the argument that it would encourage land holders to access credit, invest more of their resources, including labour and time, in the land, engage in responsible, environmentally-friendly land use, and, overall, raise the level of agricultural productivity whilst limiting the damaging consequences of the 'tragedy of the commons'."

The coastal districts of Kenya are an area with a long history of private land ownership which is also situated in a country with one of the most comprehensive efforts at land tenure reform dating from the colonial period.

Maize cropping in Kenya  Source: IITA/CGIAR

- Furthermore, the reform process has intensified with corrupt modes of land acquisition. These have in turn resulted in elites accumulating more land at the expense of others. 

One of the principle arguments of the proponents of land indivualization is that a title to the land would give farmers access to credit, which could be used to modernise land tenure. However, "titling appears not to have had much effect on credit as very few people use titles for loans. The fear of high interest rates and of subsequent loss of land on default prevents most title holders from using the title as collateral," Kanyinga finds. 

One of the most serious problems in the Kenyan land reform to which Kanyinga points is the actual maldistribution of land titles. "Land is also given as grants to political elites not for the purposes of economic development and the nurturing of indigenous capital but principally for the purpose of maintaining patronage relations and of securing political loyalty," Kanyinga has observed. "Most beneficiaries do not utilize the land but turn their grants over to private developers, a majority of whom are foreign hoteliers." 

Assessing the implications of these actions, Kanyinga concludes that this accumulation "has washed away the bases of indigenous capitalism and replaced them with Asian and foreign corporate ones which, however, are connected to central state elites." At the local level, he states, "these forms of accumulation have resulted in economic and social domination over the local people." 

In general, therefore, "the state's practice of individualizing public land according to political considerations has created more people without rights to land and has generated new types of disputes over ownership. The most important of these concerns the allocations of public land in prime, high potential areas, leading to the eviction of those already settled on the land in disregard of the improvements that occupants have made over long periods of occupation."

This brilliant study demonstrates the complexity of land reform and individualization of public land. The discussion suggests that land tenure reform hinges not only on issues of land productivity but also on issues of social restructuring, polarisation and exclusion.

Kanyinga's report thus strongly challenges the key assumptions of the proponents of land indivualization. He also has shown that one cannot neglect the key political and social issues that underpin the "Land Question complex" in contemporary Kenya.

Dr. Karuti Kanyinga completed his doctorate at the Roskilde University, Denmark and is presently a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies of the University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya.

The report can be ordered online from the Nordic Africa Institute's publications web page http://www.nai.uu.se/webbshop/ShopGB (Title: "Re-distribution from above. The Politics of Land Rights and Squatting in Coastal Kenya"; Research Report No. 115. Price: GBP 9.95, US$ 16.95). 

Source: Based on the Nordic Africa Institute

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