The Land Portal launched the State of Land Information Report, which identifies the many sources of land data and information on a country-level and provides the general public with an easy overview.

This report on Kenya is part of the recent reports on four countries in East Africa, for example, aim to uncover the many different sources of land data and information in Kenya.

About the report

The Report identifies the many sources of land data and information on a country-level and provides the general public with an easy overview, of any and all data or information activity taking place, and where they can help fill in the gaps!

The State of Land Information Report seeks to provide an overview of existing data and information on key land issues. The availability of accurate and up to date data and information on land and different land uses, such as agriculture, forestry, mining, wildlife, water, housing and infrastructure is essential for land governance and planning land use.

Therefore, the aim of the research is to uncover the many different sources of land data and information at the country-level and help to identify actual data and information gaps, with a view to establishing a baseline for targeted ‘information-based’ interventions to improve the information ecosystem.

What sets this research apart from other monitoring initiatives, is that the focus is on the database or dataset and its sources; the value or content of the information is not our main focus. The belief is that data quality, accuracy and reliability lies in the judgement of the user.

The State of Land Information Report concludes with -where necessary- concrete recommendations to data and information providers to improve their data sharing practices, to help establish a functioning, inclusive and democratized ecosystem of data.

Key Recommendations

The key recommendations emerging from this report to data and information providers in Kenya to increase access to and use of their land data and information, as well as to improve the ecosystem in Kenya overall, are the following ones:

• Establish a platform for policies, similar to Kenyalaw.org for laws, to allow for a more complete picture of the legal framework that governs land in Kenya;
• Ensure that datasets and databases are updated on a regular basis and publication dates are traceable for users;
• Consider licensing and anonymization techniques to allow for data publishing without inflicting harm or violating the privacy of data subjects, to allow for better data and information provision on certain key land categories, such as Land Tenure;
• Support & enforce data and information sharing efforts by (national) civil society actors to ensure a more inclusive and varied perspective in the Kenyan land data and information ecosystem;
• Support & enforce data publishing practices to include a minimum set of metadata with each publication, dataset or other type of information published by any type of information providers;
• Support & enforce the use of standards when publishing metadata to promote the usability as well as interoperability of data and information in the Kenyan data & information ecosystem;
• Enable the possibility to bulk download data and information from databases to allow for more meaningful and large-scale use and uptake of the data and information;
• Apply open licenses to published data and information to allow for more meaningful and in depth use, re-use and modification of data and information to increase its impact, and most importantly, consider licensing and publish it along with the data and information;
• Consider the formats in which data (and information) are published, and specifically consider machine-readable formats to allow for greater discoverability of the information as well as application in technologies;
• Apply unique identifiers to key elements of the data to ensure consistency and reference to the data and information, and allows for more efficient exchange within the data ecosystem.

The State of land Information Reports (SOLI) series

This report on Kenya is part of the recent reports on four countries in East Africa, for example, aim to uncover the many different sources of land data and information in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and South Sudan and thus provide a basis to substantiate or refute the often-repeated rhetoric that there is a lack of land data in these countries.

Reports on Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and South Sudan look at the entire landscape of data and information related to key land topics, assessing over 690 land resources from 317 different sources, to see trends and gaps when it comes to data availability as well as how accessible it is.