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20 TUESDAY
OMANDAILYOBSERVER
l DECEMBER 13 l 2016
LOCALS FEARFUL AS MEGA-PROJECTS DRIVE
RUSH FOR LAND ON KENYA’S COAST
SOPHIE MBUGUA
Too poor to buy land
where they grew up
on Kenya’s palmfringed
southern coast,
Sylvester Jefua and his
wife migrated 300 kms
northwards to Witu Forest, where they
felled seven acres of trees and built a
mud and thatch house for their family.
Ten years later, Jefua, 36, still does not
feel secure.
Land prices in Lamu County where
he built his home are soaring as the
government buys up thousands of acres
for a new road, port, coal plant, airport
and railway line — and Jefua doesn’t
have a title deed.
Last year, an unknown developer
served him and other villagers in Witu,
some 75 km (47 miles) southwest of
Lamu town, with eviction notices.
“It was a nightmare,” he said. “Where
do you settle your family after almost 10
years of what they have called home?”
The government intervened to
protect them, and promised, yet again,
to issue the villagers with title deeds.
But Jefua is still waiting for the
precious document, which he wants to
use to get a loan for a motorbike taxi
business.
A title deed would also give him
security to invest in a well to irrigate his
cassava, maize and cashew nut fields and
save his wife a lengthy trek into the forest
to fetch water.
“The government knows that a group
of people live in this area but recognising
that it is our land and granting us title
deeds has been the problem,” said
the father of five, sitting under a tree,
watching a hen tend to her chicks.
Since coming to power in 2013, the
government has issued tens of thousands
of title deeds to squatters on the coast,
like Jefua, to reduce landlessness.
But the process is being complicated
by a flurry of infrastructure projects,
which are driving up property prices,
attracting an influx of speculators and
exacerbating long-simmering tensions
over land ownership.
SPECULATORS
Untitled land on the coast has long
been traded informally, with buyers
and sellers signing agreements in the
presence of a government official.
The urgent need to formalise
ownership has been brought into sharp
focus with construction of the Lamu
Port and the Southern Sudan-Ethiopia
Transport Corridor (LAPSSET).
The $25 billion project aims to
improve Kenya’s links with neighbouring
South Sudan and Ethiopia via a highspeed
rail line, port, oil pipeline,
highway, fibre-optic networks and three
new airports.
After the government announced the
project in 2008, people — known locally
as commercial squatters — started
clearing untitled land, putting up fences
and selling it, often to speculators.
Many poor coastal residents have
also sold their land to savvy speculators
from other parts of Kenya, often armed
with wads of cash, said Amina Rashid
Masoud, Lamu County lands executive.
The new owners have acquired
Untitled land on the coast has
long been traded informally,
with buyers and sellers signing
agreements in the presence of a
government official.
A young
mother carries
her child as
she sells
handcraft
baskets in
Lamu beach,
Kenya.
title deeds from the lands ministry in
Nairobi, increasing its value ten-fold to
more than 1 million shillings ($9,800) an
acre, raising concerns about where local
people will farm, experts say.
They also point to the risk of further
conflict in the future between investors
and locals who are likely to remain
landless after selling all their land.
Lamu residents face eviction from their lands for not possessing land titles.
DISPOSSESSED
Despite being a major tourist
destination, development of Kenya’s
coast has lagged behind since
independence in 1963.
Many residents are illiterate,
unemployment is high and few have
electricity or running water in their
homes.
Before colonialism, Kenya’s coast
Young men use
donkeys as their
mode of transport in
Lamu, Kenya.
was owned by the Sultan of Zanzibar.
Enslaved Africans work on plantations,
while local Mijikenda inhabitants fled
inland.
The British colonialists introduced
laws recognising those who registered
their land, mostly Arab and Swahili
people.
Many Mijikenda were dispossessed of
communally-owned land and rendered
squatters as the British ruled that all
unregistered land belonged to them.
“Before independence, only a
small portion of land was allotted and
assigned title deeds,” said Mohamed
Mbwana, Chairman of the Shungwaya
Welfare Association, a civil society
group campaigning for residents to be
issued with title deeds.
The British forced Africans off
prime agricultural land and into native
reserves, to make way for white settler
farmers.
While post-independence
governments have settled squatters on
public land and private land that they
have bought, this has not solved the
problem, experts say.
Much of the coast is still owned
by wealthy foreigners and politicallyconnected
Kenyan elites who, as
absentee landlords, struggle to keep
squatters off their land.
President Uhuru Kenyatta has issued
more than 60,000 title deeds to coastal
squatters since 2013, including giving
away 2,000 acres of his family’s land.
But many coastal people feel they are
still being exploited by richer and more
powerful outsiders.
COMPENSATION
Joyce, who declined to give her
real name, is one of the new breed of
migrants who have moved to Lamu
County to take advantage of LAPSSET.
Wearing a floral dress and a blue
jacket, she sat outside her well-stocked
hardware shop in Hindi, 26 km from
Lamu, that supplies construction
materials to several nearby towns.
Joyce moved here from Kenya’s
capital, Nairobi, last year and has bought
three parcels of land, totalling eight
acres, half of which is titled.
“I plan to construct commercial
houses for lease as well as sell some land
to these investors,” she said, adding she
has also helped friends from Nairobi
invest in land in Hindi.
The government has already paid
compensation to acquire land from
some Hindi residents living along the
route of a road which will run 254 km
inland from Lamu to Garissa.
Negotiations over compensation
are ongoing for other LAPSSET
development projects.
The county government is surveying
land and drawing up a spatial
plan, designating areas suitable for
conservation, settlement, farming,
herding and future development
projects.
This will help to speed up the issuance
of title deeds, Masoud said, and reduce
landlessness.
“Perhaps this county planning
will ensure the government finally
recognises us and allocates us titles,”
Jefua said. — Reuters