What impact have land tenure issues had on violent conflict in Kenya? This conference report, published by the African Centre for Technology Studies, argues that the status quo of land tenure in Kenya inevitably leads to violent outcomes. However, no single meta-narrative can explain the shifting nature of land conflicts in Kenya, or in Africa generally, with greed, grievances and other factors at play. Issues of ownership, access and use all feature in land tenure conflicts in Kenya, causing not only violence but also poverty and economic instability.
A land tenure system structures the distribution of property rights within a society. Conflicts over land that result from such a system are best conceived as being nested within larger disputes and tensions. During Kenya’s colonial period, the British occupiers deprived Africans of legal ownership and user rights to their customary lands, beginning a paradigm of disenfranchisement and dispossession. In many of Africa’s post-colonial agrarian societies, the colonial legacy is a drastically skewed pattern of land distribution in the elite’s favour. States such as Kenya are slowly working to reverse this history, giving customary systems a legal basis or trying to create new “hybrid” land tenure systems.
This initial report on the Land Tenure and Violent Conflict in Kenya Project, following a detailed literature review, key interviews and preliminary fieldwork, highlights:
- Land-related grievances, many of them documented historically, do often have a basis in fact, but they are easily manipulated for political purposes. Recent violence in the Rift Valley, for example, targeted small-scale settlements, rather than large-scale farms. The objective in this case was to displace a larger population, for political reasons, rather than the acquisition of land per se.
- In a vicious cycle, newcomers to an area lack secure tenure, disincentivising them to invest in environmentally sustainable land use. “Locals” accuse them of “milking the land”, and fears of attack and displacement prevent a thaw in relations.
- The titling of land, despite benefiting the person granted title, often dispossesses “secondary rights” holders, such as tenants or those with rights to natural resources.
- Grievances over land issues are expressed in many forms, ranging from formal legal proceedings to squatting to open resistance. One vital distinction is whether the tactics develop from growing frustration inside a group, or is strongly encouraged from “outside”.
- With Kenyan electoral behaviour supposed polarised along ethnic lines, the eviction of particular groups from land before an election is a political act. Politicians and informal power-brokers will use the resulting homogenous zone to achieve power and influence.
With the project’s second phase of activities getting underway, some initial policy implications are discernible:
- Local narratives can help counterbalance the “grievance” discourses of elites and reflect the complicated perceptions of those on the ground. More narratives should be collected from relevant informants about particular land use situations.
- Policy makers must be attuned to the history of land conflicts and violence, but also remain wary of subsuming them in an oversimplifying meta-narrative.
- More legislation, or better-crafted legislation, will not address the wider issues that affect land tenure.
- New or revived structures of community involvement should shape and institutionalise land governance at the local level, with minimal state involvement if possible.
- Violence over land will continue until reforms are implemented.
