How Ardhisasa will help Kenyan Government achieve big four
agenda.

The ‘Big
Four Agenda’ are President Uhuru Kenyatta’s legacy projects that he has
committed to execute by the time he exits office in 2022. The projects directly
relate to Kenya’s Vision 2030. The President has promised to dedicate energy,
time and resources to the ensure the success of these projects. The four
pillars of the agenda are food security, affordable housing, universal health
care, manufacturing and Job creation. The agenda will ensure an ordinary Kenyan
is employed or has a reliable source of livelihood, owns a home, has enough
food and is able to access universal health care. The agenda will ensure an
ordinary Kenyan is employed or has a reliable source of livelihood, owns a home,
has enough food and is able to access universal health care.

On other
hand, Ardhisasa is a national land information management system developed by
the Ministry of Lands and Physical Planning in consultation with the National
Lands Commission, County Governments and other stakeholders, for Kenyans by
Kenyans. This platform enables the common mwananchi to access credible,
reliable and efficient land and land-based services.

Quick Guide: A Guide to Registering on Ardhisasa

Quick Guide: HowTo Pay Land Rent on Ardhisasa

Ardhisasa
project also saw the production of Kenya’s first digital topographical map and
those of the nation’s 47 counties, as well as a cadastral map for Nairobi City
County. The cadastral map enables the Ministry of Lands and Physical Planning
to start the process of migration to a unitary regime for land registration in
order to curb fraud and cut transaction time.

Before
we check at the relationship between the Ardhisasa and the big four agenda, let
us look at one of the areas under the big four agenda.

Affordable Housing

This
main aims are to deliver 500,000 affordable homes across the 47 counties,
Reduce the cost of home ownership by 50%, Reduce the low income housing gap by
60%, actualize 100% cost subsidy on
essential health services, Reduce medical out-of-pocket expenses by 54% as a
percentage of household expenditure

With
land forming the integral part in the housing project, Ardhisasa will able to
capture the details of all the properties especially those in urban arears.
This will from the background information for assessment of status of housing
in the country. The information will be an authentic source of civil data which
is important for planning purposes in the delivery of the Affordable Housing
targets.

The need for a system

In order
to achieve these, the government would want a system that will make these type
of development easy and reachable. It is not in doubt that these big four
agenda will hugely rely on availability of land for development. Therefore,
Ardhisasa will come in handy in helping the government achieve these big four
agenda as follows.

Historical land disputes

The full
rollout of the programme will facilitate the resolution of historical land
disputes and guarantee the security and sanctity of the land title deed. Many
times development like setting up of hospitals has failed to take place in
certain areas because of land disputes. These disputes unfortunately can be
trace back to the history. Therefore, with Ardhisasa, the legality of these
parcels of land has been addressed. The health sector is facing critical
challenges with the land allocation which may hinder achievement of UHC
targets 

You
don’t want to miss: Services Offered by Ardhisasa Digital Platform.

Enacting strict measures to regulate land costs and rates.

 The continued rise of land costs, especially
in urban centers, has greatly jeopardized affordable housing. The new digital
platform will benefit all landowners and potential landowners by providing
accurate information required to support the commercialization of land in a
convenient and timely manner. This
platform will also ensure transparency, efficiency, accountability and dispute
resolution thereby dramatically reducing the number of land cases that are
pending before our courts

Availing public land for housing and settlement.

The
government owns large tracts of land in both urban and rural areas which can be
used for development. Manufacturing, affordable housing, universal health care
and plantation for food security requires land. However, these land has been
grabbed by few individuals which has made it very difficult for such
development targeted by the big four agenda to take place. Separating public
land from private land which will only be possible by using Ardhisasa is key to
the big four agenda. Talking in one of the Ardhisasa question and answer forum,
Cabinet secretary for land and physical planning, Farida Karoney said that
through Ardhisasa public land has been safeguarded for public use. “It is also
notable that public land has been separated from private land; and all public
land in Nairobi has now been indexed, documented and safeguarded for public
use,” the President said. “If you have a title registered in your name but the
land belongs to the public, that particular title will never be on Ardhisasa,”
the CS said.

Development
of good infrastructure in both rural and urban centers. Infrastructure refers
to basic facilities, services and installations needed for proper functioning
of a system. In this case we are referring to provision of clean water, good
transport, a communication system and sanitation services.

Explained: How Ardhisasa will curb fraud on land transactions

Enhance investor confidence through reduced timelines in
registering property.

The big
four agenda call for collaboration between the Kenyan national government,
county government, private sector and investors both local and foreign. Big
development has stalled because of investing not willing to come and invest in
our country. Land tenure system in Kenya is very corrupt that investors are not
willing to come in and invest. However, with Ardhisasa, the data will be very
clean. This will increase the investors confident by

Protecting investors and property owners from fraudulent land
transactions.

Digitalized
land recording system in Ardhisasa will streamline land transactions and
ownership easing the frustrations of property owners and buyers who normally
would make a long queue at ministry of land headquarters. such as queueing for
long hours at land offices countrywide. The system will also be integrated with
service numbers to simplify services. The new digital system will minimize
overcrowding inland offices as people go about conducting their due diligence.

Improve service delivery by dealing with missing documents,
failed file tracking system, tattered records in the land registries and long
timelines of service delivery.

It will
provide a one-stop shop for all land transactions. At the click of a button,
citizens will carry out various land transactions online drastically reducing
human interactions, delays and all other inconveniences that Kenyans have had
to endure in land registries. The ministry has worked very hard to ensure we
only upload data that is complete, valid, and has integrity on Ardhisasa.

Must Read: How
the process of digitization works though ardhisasa at Ardhi House.

Smoothen government operations

Smoothen
government operations by linking it to external service providers including
Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), the National Lands Commission, banks, and other
key institutions involved in land matters.  In addition, Cabinet secretary for land said
that the Ardhisasa platform will assist judicial processes and provide
investigative agencies like the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission and
Directorate of Criminal Investigations with accurate and examinable data that
they need to curb fraud,” he said.

LIMs will minimize land fraud by making it easy to detect
changes or alterations.

Land
remain to be the most emotive matter since Independence, owing to historical
injustices, fraud, and the manipulation of land documents at Ardhi House. This system is the only solution to these issues
because it will ensure security of titles, proper storage of land records, and
bring to an end illegal allocation of public land. While this technological
shift may be painful, it is the only way to bring sanity in the lands sector. With the introduction of Ardhisasa, missing
files, perennial fraud, corruption and illegal land transactions will be a
matter of the past.

Registry
Index Maps (RIM) as an instrument will also reduce land-related frauds. These changes
will not affect the set boundaries because they are generated from the survey
fixed boundaries already in plans since they are accessible to all the landowners.
The advantage of using RIMs is that it displays all land parcels within an area
as opposed to a deed plan that captures data on one specific parcel

Increase revenue collection which its money will support the
four agenda.

Ardhisasa
platform will increase revenue generation due to proper valuation, and payment
of land rents as well as improve urban planning and infrastructure development.
It is also expected to boost the on-going national titling programme of
securing rights to land through issuance of titles. Land sector is one of the
main area with high potentials in boosting the GDP.

One of
the reasons why we are very concerned about this digitization reform
stabilizing is revenue generation because in a framework where you cannot
account for all your properties, it is very easy for tax cheats to go below the
radar and not pay their taxes but on a digital platform, every property is
documented. When one for instance is talking of raising apartments, huge construction
work coming, land investment among others then one need also need to talk about
the revenue aspect. Over the years, this sector has not lived into its full
potential when it comes to revenue collection. This is basically because of
frauds and people failing to pay land rents and other land related services.
With Ardhisasa, it will be impossible for property owners to evade tax. When
this collection is properly done, government shall have enough money to use in
the big four agenda.

You
don’t want to miss: Services
Offered by Ardhisasa Digital Platform

Conclusion

The big
four agenda achievement will entirely depend on the successfulness of this
digitization process. It will provide clear avenue for investment.