8, July, 2024, the Ministry of Lands, held an event to rollout the Ardhisasa platform in Murang’a county. Murang’a is the second county to migrate its lands records to the platform after Nairobi County. As of 2025, only two counties in Kenya were on ardhisasa.
The digitization process of land records in the county has been going on for months. As of March, 2024, the State Department for Lands and Physical Planning PS, Nixon Kipkorir said 90% of the 285,000 parcels the lands registry was handling had been verified.
During the roll out, it was noted that land transaction processes in Murang’a will now move to the Ardhisasa Platform as the County bids goodbye to manual processes. Land owners in the county will be expected to create accounts on the digital platform to enjoy Land Registry services.
Digitization is currently ongoing in Isiolo County and other counties are lined up to undergo a similar process.
Speaking during the roll out event in Murang’a, the Lands Cabinet Secretary, Alice Wahome commented on a number of issues affecting the Lands Sector in Kenya. She urged County Governments to style up on matters Physical and Spatial Planning. She noted that counties were allowing congestion and slum-like developments to mushroom within the counties due to poor physical and urban planning and excessive subdivision of parcels. She also advised them to go slow on subdividing agricultural land as fragmentation will lead to low production and loss of valuable assets in the long run.
The CS also clarified on the hotly debated issue of “converting freehold land to leasehold”.
“That was misinformation because we cannot convert people’s titles from Freehold to Leasehold unless they apply for change of use. And even when they apply for such we still need their consent and signature to convert their titles. What we were aiming for is a levy to be charged on Freehold land within Cities and urban areas. The levy was not going to apply to our elderly land owners in the villages”
Wahome further delved into the issue, noting that our tenure system is unfair given that some land owners in some of the most prime locations in Nairobi own freehold land and do not pay land rents even though they enjoy some of the best services the county government can offer – while leasehold landowners within the same cities are paying both rents and rates.
The CS also gave a stern warning to land cartels selling public land, nonexistent land or issuing fake papers to unsuspecting buyers. She said that she will deal with the cartels and they will have nowhere to hide.
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