Creating Land Records And Spatial Planning To attract Investors

“We are progressively updating land records. We have done spatial planning in eight square kilometres and are looking at creating a new central business district. Some 7,000 plots for commercial and low-density residences have been identified and demarcated.” - Adan Hussein Hassan

Land is one resource Mandera County has in plenty, and it has nature-provided clean canvas in unspoiled rolling ranges to plan its use imaginatively to spur growth and raise living standards.

The County has turned decades of marginalization that saw little development in its land use to an advantage, as it now has a clean slate to start from, as well as sufficient space to drive new age thinking in spatial planning.

While land is still largely communally owned, with more than 90 percent of it undocumented, the County has received its first batch of 400 title deeds. The County Government is on a race to get land registration going on, knowing only too well that this will unlock economic potential as residents seek credit to feed entrepreneurship and investment.

The Lands ministry has established a one-stop shop and is slowly building records.

The County has hired staff to support local investors, the residents as well as prospecting investors. “There was no lands office when we took over as the County Government in March 2013. Land was managed by the county council and had only one surveyor. There was no planner, architect or an urban expert to guide development of a land use policy,” says the County Executive for Lands, Housing and Physical Planning Adan Hussein Hassan.

An aerial view of commercial plots in Mandera

Despite this most basic start, the County Government has in two years set itself well on course, setting up a professionally driven lands management structure. In an ongoing zoning exercise, the County has deployed a physical plan that will see it influence civic development. And the private sector has noticed, driving market prices for plots in the newly zoned areas to as high as KSh4 million.

“We have employed two planners and a surveyor to help with professional input required for urban developments,” says Mr. Hussein, adding: “We are progressively updating land records. We have done spatial planning in eight square kilometres and are looking at creating a new central business district.”

Some 7,000 plots for commercial and low density residences have been identified and demarcated.” Thriving on a non-existent land policy, Mandera town hitherto grew organically towards the national border but this is now being directed strategically towards the roomier hinterland. Planning is also ongoing for all the seven other towns within the county. Each will provide zones for high-density residential and low-density residential structures, industrial parks, commercial, special economic zones and a central business district.

Achievements

• Ministry has purchased adequate survey equipment and stationeries.

• Set aside land for the development of strategic County projects: International

Airport, Regional Livestock Market, County headquarters, County assembly, County Rest House, Governor’s Residence, County Abattoir; University & other institutions of higher learning and tertiary colleges; Markets among others.

• Demarcation of 6,000 plots allocated to the public by the defunct Town Council of Mandera.

• Developed an up to date data of government houses.

• Reconstructed and registry has been fully reorganized and computerized.

• Completion the design for the first County housing scheme of 84 units

• Spatial planning of Mandera Town and the rest of county by the end of 2016.