Description

The Community Lands Act (Kenya) of 2016 (CLA 2016 for short) was a landmark legislation bringing into recognition customary forms of land tenure exercised with Kenyan communities based on predominant cultural practices. One of the objectives of the act is to improve the security of land tenure for the largely unregistered community land on which the livelihoods of the majority of Kenyans depends.

Ensuring security of tenure on land for all people and peoples of the world is one of the most pressing challenges society faces today. By some estimates, as of 2000, up to 70% of land rights across the globe may have had no formal recognition. As such laws such as CLA 2016 (and many similar laws which have sprung up across the continent) are timely in dealing with the gross lack of land tenure security globally.

CLA 2016 requires the establishment of what one may call community land registries (CLR). The precise way in which such CLRs should be implemented is however not specified. Even in recently released regulations for the implementation of CLA 2016 this is not entirely clear. Also, whether proper mechanisms are put in place to support the provenance of the CLR contents - required especially when conflicts graduate from community-level disputes to legal or administrative disputes at the state level.

Several concrete topics can be pursued under this broad subject. A thesis under this topic can look at one of several aspects of implementation of CLRs in the context of CLA 2016 or similar laws in other countries. The focus would be on challenges and requirements both social, institutional, and technical.

Examples of focal issues include:
1. Requirements for CLR implementation - in relation to one of the points below.
2. Examination of local institutional arrangements in one or more communities to examine their readiness of CLR implementation.
3. Exploration of technical systems that can be realistically used to implement a simple minimal CLR. This would involve requirements analysis, design, and prototyping to provide a proof of concept.
4. Blockchain vs distributed systems as platforms for community land registries.

Objectives and Methodology

The objective of this topic is explore the challenges of providing ICT based solutions to support the implementation of community land registries - that is, registers of land tenure relations used, managed, and possibly maintained locally by communities. This presents challenges not only in terms of specifying the functional requirements but also figuring out the non-functional requirements and how they can be achieved within the technological state of the art.

Further reading

T.B.D.