The Kajiado county government launched launched a 10-year Spatial Plan to help manage its ongoing land-sector reforms.
Governor Joseph Lenku who presided over the event said the plan is part of ongoing land reforms in Kajiado.
Lenku said the plan is a huge milestone for the people of Kajiado and the entire nation.
“Our proximity to the capital city, Nairobi, and being part of the larger metropolis fraternity, we are strategically placed to offer room for expansion of a city that is bursting at the seams over a rapid population explosion. What happens in the county significantly affects the entire country and beyond," he said.
"As a metropolitan county growing at a rate of 5.5 per cent in population, we contribute significantly to accommodating population growth within the city. We offer ample space for new settlements, and new investments in the manufacturing, mining, agricultural and livestock sectors as well as tourism and hospitality sector."
Lenku said because of this, management of the county land sector is a national matter.
He said the county’s reference as the dormitory of Nairobi is not built on simple presumptions but on deep and close interactions, that Kajiado has with the Nairobi City County.
This interaction, he said, must be carefully managed to harness coexistence and enable the two to manage their spaces better.
He said that for instance, the county has delicate nature assets and wildlife resources that have been threatened by forces of the land transformation.
Despite the demand the county experiences for land use in various forms, Lenku said, Kajiado remains a pastoralist county and a pastoral paradise.
He noted that faced with the realities of a changing world, and the need to remain authentic to their culture and traditional source of livelihoods, the urgency of aligning strategies to maximise the utility of the land resource and protect eco-fragile resources to thrive in a sustainable manner is inevitable.
The Kajiado governor said activities that are driven by the desire to create settlements, expansion of towns, clearing of land for crop farming and other economic activities have left major scars on the county's landscape.
“The relationship between climate and vegetation cannot be over-emphasised. This clearance has undermined," he said.
"Vegetative recovery could also be attributed to the long droughts and depressed rainfall regimes the county has had to grapple with."
Lenku said in the next phase, the county government is determined to participate in the national tree cover movement and rangeland restoration that will guarantee, among other environmental benefits, access to carbon credit finances as an alternative source of livelihood for our local communities.
To achieve this, he said, the county will introduce green spaces at the local level by moving away from the common subdivision of 50 x 100 plots into 100 x 100 plots.
“This will be in line with our plan to set aside 10 per cent of our land to the tree cover revolution,” he said.
To achieve the vision of a transformed and sustainable Kajiado, Lenku said they have had to develop a mechanism through which their focus would be on strategies that will make the county more prosperous now and in the future.
A lot of input, he said, from the people, experts, and state and non-state actors went into the final formulation of the county’s four-pronged vision of modulated pastoralism, liveable towns, climate-proofed physical environment and equitable access to quality education.
Land utility and management, he said, is the fulcrum around which the success of the first three prongs revolves.
He said the county established a Geographic Information System lab that utilises technology in planning and surveying of space.
“The same has been utilised in the preparation of this County Spatial Plan Digitisation of our land records has made them more secure and minimised manipulations that used to occur in the past,” the governor said.
"Wananchi have the privilege of securing services faster than it was before this development."
Besides, he said, development applications have been put on e-platform (Kedams) which has been in use since 2021.
It had made it easy for residents to deliver applications from the convenience of their living rooms.
Lenku said the county has equally, embraced a validation program to ascertain property ownership.
Speaking during the event, County Assembly Speaker Justus Ngossor urged the executive to be committed to implementing the policy that will see the county become an investment hub.
The chairperson of the ad-hoc lands committee in the assembly Jonathan Koroine said the document would be a tool that promotes socio-economic development in Kajiado.
He said the county Spatial Plan policy will help the executive plan its land development by defining the positions of pasture, agricultural and housing development lands.
“This will enable the county to plan its land use. With such plans, people buying land for development purposes will be guided by policies in their quest to develop their properties,” Koroine said.
