It was a landmark case for its time, a first for East Africa and possibly for the continent. A group of Africans challenged a colonial power in a colonial court to appeal a major land grab and demand reparations. They lost on a technicality but the ripple effects of the Maasai Case continue to be felt.
The Kenyan government has proposed a compulsory housing levy from workers salaries to support contractors to build affordable homes for the working class. As incomes are squeezed and living standards collapse, Ambreena Manji and Jill Cottrell Ghai argue that the case for asking workers to bear the cost of housing development has not been made.
Property invasion has emerged as a core facet of the recent demonstrations including the Northlands in Nairobi, and Kedong ranch in Isiolo. Is our failure to implement Agenda 4 of the 2007 National Accord coming back to bite us? What is the future of the land question in Kenya? The Elephant's Joe Kobuthi talks to conservationist Mordecai Ogada.
Introduction of a land tax would lead to the sale of the large tracts of land that lie fallow and unused by those unwilling to pay the tax. This in turn would have the effect of depressing the price of land, making it available for development.
The new administration should invest in enhancing service delivery by improving management of land information, developing and ensuring adherence to land use plans and spatial plans, and supporting continued implementation of land and environment laws and policies.
Across Africa projects of capitalist extraction still ensure evictions, mass expropriations of land and misery. Today the government of Tanzania wants to expand the space for luxury tourists to enjoy picturesque views of nature – a wildlife fantasy of nature supposedly untouched by humans. Laibor Kalanga Moko and Jonas Bens argue that justification for the dispossession of indigenous communities has shifted from “economic development” to “wildlife conservation”.
While conservation NGOs have condemned the violence meted out against the Maasai in Loliondo, they do not want herders or subsistence hunters on land that they seek to control and profit from and will fight to retain their power with the immense resources at their disposal.
Urban displacements greatly diminish the living conditions of already desperate populations living on the brink of poverty.
The Community Land Act, No. 27 of 2016 (the Act) came into force on 21 September 2016. The Act gives effect to Article 63 of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010 (the Constitution) which provides for the classification of land known as community land. While the law is progressive on paper- it enables local communities to register and own their communal lands legally, its application has been slow. The Elephant in conversation with Dr Hussein Wario, Executive Director at the Center for Research and Development in Drylands, Kenya.
The Tanzanian government is threatening to evict more than 80,000 Maasai from the Ngorongoro world heritage site, claiming that the Maasai must be cleared from their land in the interests of conservation and wildlife corridors.
It is a myth that the only way to increase productivity on existing agricultural lands is through Green Revolution programmes and evidence shows that they are among the principal causes of unsustainable land use.
Pastoralists have long been the object of unfavourable and misleading stereotypes and narratives that have contributed to their communities' neglect and marginalization.