In Kenya laws, Section 6 of the Land Act (No. 6 of 2012) gives the mandate to the Cabinet Secretary of the Ministry of Lands and Physical Planning to coordinate and manage the National Spatial Data Infrastructure. This requires key development strategies including technologies, regulation, policy frameworks among others.

In fulfillment of this role, the land Ministry embarked on developing new system called Ardhisasa through technologies, policies and putting up the necessary resources to promote the sharing of geospatial data throughout government levels, private and non-profit sectors, and the relevant stakeholders.

The ministry has been keeping manual records since Independence and some survey records are more than 100 years old, exposed to tear and wear. This has made it possible for the disappearance of the key records such as green cards, white cards and other documents such as title deeds. Speaking to media in one of her what has now become her routine interviews, Cabinet secretary for land and physical planning acknowledged that the old storage method has been a problem.  Karoney says the old system was not only prone to loss of records but the aged paper made it hard to read the details.

Introduction of National Land Information Management system.

NLIMS is an information system that enables the capture, management, and analysis of geographically referenced land-related data to produce land information for land administration and management decisions. The system integrates all operations of the Ministry of Lands line departments such as land registration, land administration, physical planning, survey & mapping, valuation, adjudication & settlement, national land commission and provides a one-stop-shop where end-to-end transactions in relation to land are conducted.

Properties captured in Ardhisasa.

In the Ardhisasa, not all properties will be captured as only property records available in the system are those registered under the Nairobi Registry. Land registry commonly known as central registry is in Ministry of land headquarters where the files are being stored and transaction was being done before the digitization came with recent reforms in the land reforms. The Ministry intends to update the system to include properties registered at the Central Registry (covering the Government Lands and the Land Titles Registries) and subsequently registries in other forty seven counties in counties in Kenya.

It is worth noting that currently, not all types of land records are in the system. The system as structured only identifies properties with geospatial data. Information that describes objects, events or other features with a location on or near the surface of the earth. Geospatial data typically combines location information (usually coordinates on the earth) and attribute information (the characteristics of the object, Karoney said

Confirming this Karoney said that topographical survey was done and captured al the land details. We did topographical maps for the whole country and a cadastral a collection of land parcels in a digital platform, for Nairobi and then digitized non-spatial data. Phenomena concerned) with temporal information

If you want to know developments around my parcel, there is satellite imagery to tell of hospitals, roads, rivers. I am really proud of what the team has built.

Therefore, sectional properties, such as apartments, flats are not in the system.  The Sectional Properties Act, 2020 mainly simplifies the process of registering sectional properties in Kenya. It provides for; inter alia, the division of buildings into units to be owned by individual proprietors who will have individual titles for their respective units. A sectional unit is defined as a space that is situated within a building and described by reference to floors, walls and ceilings within buildings and the concept of sectional properties entails a sectional unit together with a distinct share of the common area.

Nevertheless, at the property owner’s request, the properties of this nature can be surveyed and fed into the system. The system shall NOT provide for the following categories of properties:

Properties with incomplete data records, e.g., To this end, the Cabinet Secretary, in consultation with the National Land Commission and county governments, developed the National Land Information Management System (NLIMS).

In the rolling out of the system the Ministry has for the first phase made available all properties registered under the Nairobi Registry. However, some properties registered under the Nairobi Registry may not be available for the following reasons:

1)     Properties with incomplete data

Properties may have incomplete data records. records that lack documentation showing how the proprietor came to own the property, e.g., letters of allotment or transfers and;

Land grabbers have taken over public assets and have title deeds issued by the government. Having started the review, the parcels will not be on the platform, the CS said.

You can’t cause a file to disappear on the digital platform because there will be an audit trail. There are also rights for every level of clearance.

2)     Properties registered as long-term leases based on architectural plans are not yet recognized by the system.

The Sectional Properties Act also denies property developers leeway to use title deeds for land where apartments stand as security for loans and other financing facilities

Long-term leases have for a long time been used to confer ownership of fractional units of land, apartments, flats, town houses and offices in Kenya. The Land Registration Act No. 3 of 2012 (LRA) provides under section 54 (5) that the Registrar shall register long-term leases and issue certificates of lease over apartments, flats, maisonettes, townhouses or offices having the effect of conferring ownership, if the property comprised is properly geo-referenced and approved by the statutory body responsible for the survey of land. Section 54 (6) further provides that the Cabinet Secretary for Lands shall prescribe regulations for registration of long term leases.

Long term leases are usually registered on the strength of architectural plans / drawings. Such drawings do not fall within the meaning of geo referencing. The SPA stipulates that registration of sectional units should be accompanied by sectional plans as opposed to architectural drawings. Sectional plans have been defined under the LRA to mean a geo-referenced plan of units or a part of land as the case may be, prepared by a surveyor and approved by the statutory body responsible survey of land. In compliance with section 13 of the SPA, the Cabinet Secretary in charge of Lands published a notice to the effect that the Ministry will no longer register long-term leases supported by architectural drawings intending to confer ownership. The notice further specified that all sectional plans submitted for registration shall;

·         be geo-referenced

·         indicate the parcel number

·         indicate units numbers

·         indicate approximate floor area of each unit

·         be signed by the proprietor

·         be signed and sealed by the Director of Surveys

·         clearly indicate the user of the unit

If you have a transaction or when in need of using the land, we will give you a surveyor, create the geospatial data and then you can proceed with your transaction, Karoney said in one of the interviews

Before 2012, there were five laws governing the sector but the same were consolidated into the Land Registration Act à the only legal framework presently in use.

3)     Public land

Properties recognized as public land and captured on the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Illegal and Irregular Allocation of Land (Ndungu Report) and the Revocation Gazette Notice No. 6862.

 This report is simply on Illegal and Irregular allocation of public land provides an insight into a critical, recent episode in the struggles over ‘Land and graft in Kenya.

Forestlands, National Parks, Game Reserves, Wetlands, Riparian Reserves & Protected Areas: 

4)     Settlement Schemes & Trust Lands:

Trust land, including settlement scheme land purchased by government with international loans from European settlers for settlement by African smallholders or carved out of Trust land has been similarly abused. These are land these land were not adequately allocated.

Commission found that, overall, whilst the establishment of settlement schemes and their subsequent allocation in the early years of independence generally conformed to the original objectives, in later years there was extensive deviation, with much land having been allocated for purposes other than settlement and agricultural production

5)     Urban, State & Ministries Land

The Commission indicated that numerous methods were used to grab land falling under this category. There was found to have been widespread abuse of presidential discretion with regard to alienated urban land, with in many instances (both) Presidents Kenyatta and Moi making grants to land to individuals without any consideration to the public interest, for political reasons, and without proper pursuit of legal procedures,

CS Farida Karoney on land that may have been grabbed: We have separated public land from private land. We will assess how people acquired titles for public land and a decision on what to do will follow thereafter

Conclusion.

The notice of 7th May 2020 reiterates the requirement to convert all long-term sub-leases intended to confer ownership to apartments, villas, offices etc. which do not conform with section 54 (5) of the Land Registration Act, 2012 and section 13 of the Sectional Properties Act, 2020.

In reaction and to ensure proper compliance with the above laws provisions, the Ministry has started the process of converting the land. Also, in a bid to ensure compliance with the above-mentioned legal provisions they have stated that they intend to convert long-term leases previously registered on the basis of architectural drawings, to conform to the current land regime. Registration and issuance of titles for such units will only be done where the units are properly geo-referenced and approved by the statutory body responsible for the survey of land.

At premier we shall keep you updated on further developments on the Ardhisasa and sectional properties process. In the meantime, we remain available to answer any queries you may have in regard to the Ardhisasa and latest land reforms in general.