237 research outputs found
Kenya’s devolved land administration marks the start of a new phase of political struggle over land control
No full textCatherine Boone and Ambreena Manji examine whether long-awaited land law reform in Kenya has resolved longstanding land grievances
Making UK aid work: why scrutiny is key – and how to achieve it
No full textThe effectiveness of UK aid spending is reliant on the government’s ability to exercise meaningful oversight over spending decisions. This oversight is currently lacking, explain Ambreena Manji and Daniel Cullen, putting the effectiveness of aid spending at risk
The struggle for land and justice in Kenya
No full textWhy, despite the introduction of new land laws beginning in 2012, has there been an increase in land grabbing in Kenya? Why has legislation failed to address long standing grievances about grossly unequal land distribution? This important book suggests that questions of justice should be central to discussions of African land reform. Constitutional reformers in Kenya promised transformative changes in land relations. However, the reality has disappointed. Land law reforms since 2010 have been more concerned with the administration of land and with bureaucratic power than with the real consequences of unequal access to land for ordinary Kenyans. Manji documents this thwarted struggle and surveys the prospects for genuine change
Book Review: The struggle for land and justice in Kenya by Ambreena Manji
No full textAmbreena Manji’s The struggle for land and justice in Kenya, James Currey, 2020, aims to provide a socio-legal approach to understanding developments in the land domain in Kenya between 2010 and 2020. Specifically, the book studies land accumulation by dispossession and the struggles against exploitation through a justice framework. The book is divided into 8 chapters
Bulldozers, homes and highways: Nairobi and the right to the city
No full textIn Kenya road building, widely viewed as an ‘unqualified human good’, is closely linked to an ‘Africa Rising’ narrative. In this paper the author argues that road building is an attempt to assert political authority derived from a longstanding developmentalist impulse, one in which private accumulation and spectacular public works go hand in hand. In light of massive infrastructural transformations, the author develops a conceptualisation of the right to the city: what is needed is a radical understanding of the city and its potentialities that wrests control of the idea away from a bureaucratic vision, and imbues it instead with collective meaning
Property, conservation, and enclosure in Karura forest, Nairobi
No full textThis article tells the story of the urban Karura forest in Nairobi in order to explore access to and control of green spaces in an African city at a time of rapid, haphazard urbanization. Using insights from critical legal geography, it shows that although in strictly legal terms Karura forest remains properly gazetted public land, it continues to exclude citizens in important ways. This is because of a neoliberal conception of security that has promoted the exercise of significant private power over public space. The article examines the powerful ideas that were deployed to achieve the enclosure of the forest. Ideas of ecological guardianship were mobilized in tandem with arguments that the forest must be made ‘safe and secure’. A number of devices (fences, paths, trails, and signposts) played important property functions. This case study provides important insights into the politics of access to green space and to questions of social justice at a time of rapid urban change, not just in Kenya but more widely
Eliminating Poverty? ‘Financial Inclusion’, Access to Land, and Gender Equality in International Development
No full textThe UK White Paper on International Development published in 2009 explicitly links access to financial services with poverty reduction. In doing so, it echoes the policies the World Bank set out in its 2008 Policy Research Report on Finance. This paper offers a detailed analysis of these development policies and connects the current plans for the expansion of financial sectors in the developing world with policies that promote the acquisition of formal land title. The paper argues that as asset-backed lending expands, commercial banks will come to play an increasingly important role in third world economies. In light of this, it reviews important first-hand accounts of the difficulties of drafting legislation to protect women's access to land in the face of opposition from commercial lenders, using Tanzania and Uganda as illustrative examples. The paper assesses the implications of expanding access to credit for gender equality and concludes that it is difficult to reconcile the promotion of financial inclusion with the aim of international development to end poverty
The Politics of Land Reform in Kenya 2012
No full textThis article provides a critique of the final stages of Kenya’s land law reform process, which has resulted in the approval of the 2012 Land Act, Land Registration Act, and National Land Commission Act. It argues that in spite of the constitutional and political importance of the new legislation, the process was marked by haste, lack of engagement by legislators, and little participation by citizens. The new laws can be viewed as a deeply disappointing outcome of a decade’s struggle over land policy. The article explores the effects of the constitutional deadlines for new legislation; the contradictory role of civil society in relation to the new laws and the bureaucratic structures they create; and the redistributive intentions and potential of the new land legislation
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