Land bank scheme now comes under scrutiny

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.