Land Rights
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Publication Determinants of Women Access and the Extent of Access to Land Among Small-Scale Farmers in Machakos County, Kenya: A Double-Hurdle Approach(Journal of Economics and Sustainable Development, 2019-04-30) Veronica N. Kariuki; Oscar I. Ayuya; John M. NdukoThe aim of this paper is to evaluate the determinants of women access and the extent of access to land. The study used cross-sectional data from 384 randomly selected small-scale women farmers from Machakos County, Kenya. Using double hurdle (DH) model, we found that marital status, household size, the value of productive assets, credit borrowed, extension contacts, farmers’ groups and social influence from family members had a positive and significant influence on women access to land. However, the spousal age gap, market distance and social influence from friends/peers had a negative influence on the probability of women having access to land. To improve women access to land, the findings imply that women need to be motivated to join and participate in farmers’ groups through which they can gain access to extension information and credit. In addition, women farmers should be sensitized on the need to invest in farm productive assets. Importantly, the government can aid in improving crucial infrastructures and promoting girl-child education since education empowers women and inhibit early marriages.Publication Militianisation of resource conflicts: The case of land-based conflict in the Mount Elgon region of Western Kenya - GSDRC(GSDRC, 2008-10) Robert Romborah SimiyuIn the early 1970s, the government of Kenya set out to implement a land resettlement programme for squatters in the Chepyuk area of Mount Elgon District, intended primarily for the Mosop (Ndorobo) and Soy clans of the district’s ‘autochthonous’ and dominant Sabaot community. From its inception, the programme was derailed by claims and counterclaims of state favouritism and corruption by both clans, leading to a cycle of allocations, annulments and evictions. Th is has engendered discontentment and exacerbated intra-community tensions and confl icts, which took a more violent turn in 2006 aft er the fi nalisation of the land allocation process, during the third phase of the resettlement programme. One of the outcomes of the process required some members of the Soy clan, who had already settled, to vacate their land and others to give up part of their land for subdivision and allocation to other families from the Mosop clan and a section of the Soy clan. However, they mobilised young people to defend their land and resist any evictions, culminating in the formation of a militia group called the Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF). It is the activities of this militia that have defi ned the confl ict in Mount Elgon DistrictPublication My Roots and Their Importance in Understanding Abagusii History(Africa Bib, 1986) Kiriama, Herman O.Using his own family as an example, the author shows how a synthesis of a single family tree can help to understand the general history of a society. The genealogy, which extends from 1638 up to 1983, indicates that by the early years of the 17th century, the Abagusii (descendants of Mogusii) had not yet moved from their cradleland somewhere in northern/southern Uganda. They were part of a large congregation of people who were later to separate and become distinct groups. Within the spell of one century, they had migrated to their present homeland in western Kenya. The author examines how the Abagusii moved from their cradleland and under whose leadership, as well as the relationship between different groups of Abagusii. Bibliogr., ref.Publication Shimoni Caves Contested Meaning(Africa Bib, 2009) Kiriama, H.In pre-colonial and the early colonial periods, African intangible heritage was managed by local communities using their local unwritten laws; many sacred sites were managed by traditional custodians who used a series of taboos, rituals and restrictions to take care of the sites. This was so because many African societies' religious beliefs were based on the respect for natural spirits and ancestors, belief in the continuing involvement of ancestors in their lives, beliefs in the forces of good and evil that can be manipulated by direct communication with the ancestors and spirits through prayer and sacrifice. Therefore places such as mountains, water springs, rocks, rivers and caves became ''intangible sacred' sites. Though this has to a large measure changed because of the influence of Christianity, Islam or Western education, there are areas, however, where ancestor and spirit worship is still done openly regardless of religious affiliation. Shimoni village on the southern Kenya coast is one such placePublication The Landscapes of Slavery in Kenya(Research Gate, 2019-03-25) Kiriama, HermanCultural landscapes impacted by slavery and its effects ineighteenth-century Kenya included coastal trading entrepôts,interior caravan trade routes, coastal plantation complexes,European mission stations, freed slave settlements, and runawayslave settlements. Landscapes represent the values, symbols, andmeanings that societies have imbued upon them. A culturallandscape is not only a physical place, but also encompasses thememories associated with that space. Studies of such landscapesenable understanding of the histories of peoples, places, andevents. This article works to understand how the people wholived in landscapes of slavery in Kenya perceived and interactedwith those terrains. Former slaves and their descendants usedtangible and intangible elements of landscapes to constructplaces of memory; these memories not only connect them to thelandscapes they presently occupy but also to an imaginary,ancestral homeland that they have never seen.