Public Control Of Private Land In Kenya: An Analysis Of Land Control In Muhoroni, Nyanza Province In Western Kenya.
Abstract
Public policy on agricultural land in Kenya favours individual registered smallholdings
(except in ranching and highly mechnised farming areas and settlement schemes. Thus as
the registration of Trust (traditional) lands gained momentum in the mid 1960s, the
independent Government passed the legislation (the Land Control Act Cap,302) to
regulate the dealings in agricultural land to avoid land fragmentation, speculative
accumulation of holdings, unproductive indebtedness and to stem those transactions that
would be detrimental to the landholder's family.
Using the research findings from Muhoroni, a settlement administrative division in
Nyanza province where sugarcane is grown mainly by small-scale farmers as a cash crop,
we argue that more than three decades later, the land control system has not achieved its
desired objectives. The statute is over ambitious in its provisions and the public land
control agents, the boards in their present set up, composition and approach have no way
of implementing the provisions of the statu~ on the ground. The control boards are
however able to safeguard the traditional social interest of the family members where
they stand to loose in a fraudulent transaction if such a case comes to them.
The land control boards have neither the pro-active investigative ability nor the
enforcement machinery on land matters.
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
- Research Reports [210]
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