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{
    "id": 834439,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/834439/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 180,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kiharu, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Ndindi Nyoro",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13370,
        "legal_name": "Samson Ndindi Nyoro",
        "slug": "samson-ndindi-nyoro"
    },
    "content": "came up with that was called: “The Great Leap Forward.” Another one that followed closely was the “Cultural Revolution.” The government was forcing farmers to work like slaves in China in the land that was more or largely owned by the Government. There is a very clear difference between the reign of Mao Zedong then and the time of the great leap forward and the reign of a person like Deng Xiaoping. When Deng Xiaoping became the Chair of the Communist Party, one of the things they did with the entire leadership of the Communist Party is to kind of liberalise agriculture. This unlocked productivity of agricultural products in China and within less than 10 years, agricultural productivity in China had increased by over 30 per cent. Therefore, all I am trying to say is even historically, as it is true now, there is a clear correlation between the land regime or the land policy and the growth of any economy. Even as we start the economy itself because that policy is more important than all the other things, there is a reason why industrialisation came just after majority of countries in the world started liberalising land. If you compare the regimes of feudalism, where a few landlords used to own land and then all the other people would work and take some amount of commodity to the land owners, and the agrarian revolution, there is a reason why industrialisation had to wait until we had the Agrarian Revolution when you liberalise land and give a person land to maximise on its productivity by the mix of the factors of the land owner. Even as we talk about land, we also have to talk about the commodities that are found within that land. One of the clear commodities, and I am not talking about this because I am from Murang’a – as you know we are demanding to be paid for our water by all these Nairobians and even those seated here in this House – I want to talk about is minerals. There is a very clear correlation of how we manage the mineral resources that are found in land in so far as the growth of the economy is concerned. Even as we debate this Report about land, I urge that we also think about minerals in those countries because they are found in this land. In my opinion, we ought to go the same way or the same path that Botswana travelled in around 1960s when even the small miners in Migori can be liberalised to be actually authentic miners and not be branded as people who are engaging in a criminal activity. When we create this kind of notion that some of these economic activities like mining can only be done by big companies, we will only be promoting extractive institutions whereas we can also promote our small miners and the so-called small people to engage in those economic activities. I have gone through the lessons learnt in the Report and it is very important that we start moving towards the regime as was mentioned clearly by the Chair when he was moving the Motion on digitising our land. Currently, within the land transaction is a den of conmen. It is all about the issue of ownership that you can get five people owning the same piece of land. That sends a very bad warning to any person who would want to invest in Kenya because, as you know, every investment is based on land. If you are not even sure; if there is no sanctity of the documentation of the ownership of land, that sends a very bad signal to us and even to other investors who would want to invest in this country. We can borrow a lot from geospatial technology. We can borrow from the Global Positioning System (GPS) where a person at the Ministry of Lands can just go to the system and go to a piece of land, for example, in Migori or The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}