Seemingly land-related conflicts are on the rise and becoming violent as evidenced by the reported on-going Kihiu Mwiri land troubles, among others. This saga is just the tip of more conflicts brewing below the radar of policy makers.
These conflicts are of policy concern because they are imposing external costs with far-reaching consequences on the economy.
Such costs include loss of innocent life and investment. Importantly the absence of legally defined property rights over the land in question tends to undercapitalise its value.
Indisputably, the land represents unexploited capital that Kenya desperately need to support and sustain its economic take-off as embodied in the Vision 2030 development blueprint. These conflicts are facts that must be addressed head on.
The post-independence government adopted a market-based land distribution strategy to resettle its citizens who had been previously displaced from their ancestral land through discriminatory colonial land alienation policies.
The strategy aimed at transferring large-scale European farms to Africans through public-funded settlement schemes. The strategy also encouraged formation of private land-buying companies (LBCs).
Some of these LBCs have been the hotbed of highly contentious issue stemming from delays in issuing title deeds to the bonafide land rights holders.
Conventionally, land-related conflicts are positively correlated with the value of the land. As land value increase, one expects conflict to increase particularly in areas where land rights are not clearly defined.
This assertion is anchored on the solid economic theory of emerging property rights, which infer that an individual will claim property rights over any land if its value outweighs the cost of the claim.
Inferably, therefore, these conflicts are a credible signal of the emerging property rights. These conflicts manifest in diverse ways depending on whether they emanate from private, public and community lands.
Private land-related conflicts like the LBC cases are easy to address. Land rights are clearly defined and are supposedly vested with bonafide members through a certificate of ownership.
Since such certificates are not legally primae facie proof of ownership, they been the source of contestation.
Ideally, acquisition of the certificate was a preliminary step of title deed registration process and its eventual issuance. However, the registration process has retrospectively been unfortunately delayed by internal lethargy, among other factors.
Such delays in the midst of a phenomenal increase in land values that we witnessing has increased tenfold the susceptibility of the process to fraud as evidenced by the aforementioned case.
Furthermore, based on my personal experience, the delay in some cases is intentional in order to sustain rent-seeking proclivities of company officials.
In conclusion, mitigating the conflicts emanating from LBCs demands the expedited issuance of title deeds. However, issuance of the title deeds alone is not enough to end the conflicts.
Such action must be accompanied by effective legal enforcement of the sanctity of the title deeds.
In addition, the government has a duty to ensure effective functionality of the land market by ending lethargy in the land registries that has compromised the conveyance process.
Prof Kieyah is the acting programme coordinator at Kippra.
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