BRN IGNITE Grant project examines how documents contribute to land dispossession in Kenya

A developing research project led by Kariuki Kirigia is examining how land documents – including maps, title deeds and leases – are being used in ways that contribute to land dispossession among the Maasai of southern Kenya.  

An emerging finding from this project is how climate-related conservation and mitigation efforts are enabling new forms of displacement, a process often described as green colonialism.  

“Challenges such as climate change are forcing communities to change their relationship with the land, often through capitalist mechanisms such as financing for biodiversity or carbon credits, which are alienating land from communities,” says Kirigia, an assistant professor in the School of the Environment and the African Studies Centre in the Faculty of Arts & Science.  

His BRN IGNITE Grant project, Dispossession through documents: Maps, title deeds, land leases and land registries in Kenya, aims to avert land loss in Narok County. Building on previous ethnographic research and long-term relationships cultivated in Maasailand, he intends to use the findings to hold workshops among Maasai communities to equip landowners and activists to challenge land-grabbing done in the name of conservation. 

In nearly all of Narok County, formerly communal land has been subdivided into plots for private ownership. Subdivision efforts began in the 1970s, but actual subdivision has occurred in the last two decades. Once land is subdivided, individual owners are supposed to receive title deeds. In many cases, however, rightful landowners have not been issued their deeds, effectively dispossessing them. In the process, title deeds are being deployed as a means to perpetrate land dispossession by selling or allocatingland to non-members of the landowning communities. 

During the subdivision process, local elites often collude with land surveyors to manipulate maps and cartographic information. Because surveyors hold technical and legal authority – and access to information is often denied to community members – the process becomes unjust.  

This unequal access to information has had direct implications for green colonialism by disadvantaging communities when leasing land to create wildlife conservation areas. Kirigia’s project seeks to address this inequity.  

“Community members sometimes do not understand the terms of land-lease agreements. They are often told by community leaders that they will benefit, but they are not properly informed about what they are agreeing to,” Kirigia says.  

In some cases, landowners are fined for accessing conservation areas that had once been in their possession. In the process, they incur hefty costs for infractions about which they have limited legal knowledge.  

“Many of these landowners are actually losing what could be an income-generating avenue by receiving fines for accessing conservation areas that are assumed to be on their land,” Kirigia says. 

Training the next generation of researchers 

In his work, Kirigia, who is from Kenya, draws on African epistemologies to address environmental justice, climate change and land rights – part of the foundations of his course, Climate and Environmental Justice in Africa.   

“Land for us functions as a library of knowledge, a space where we coexist with other forms of life, including wildlife, and a space where we connect with our ancestors through intergenerational knowledge exchange,” Kirigia says.   

“I take it as a responsibility to train the next generation of young people on how to continue this work of taking care of the land and fostering positive and harmonious relations with the land.”  

Kirigia’s teaching and research focus is steered by preserving knowledge for the next generation, empowering communities to safeguard their rights, and training future researchers to engage with cultural sensitivity while co-creating knowledge to tackle emerging challenges.  

Throughout this project, he collaborated with the Nashulai Maasai Conservancy, a community-owned and directed wildlife conservancy, and the Indigenous Livelihoods Enhancement Partners (ILEPA), a non-governmental organization in Narok County that educates communities on land governance and protection. ILEPA hosted two of Kirigia’s master’s students, who conducted fieldwork for the project in Narok County in May and June 2025. 

“[Working] collaboratively with local organizations, we consider the work we do as knowledge co-production to ensure that the knowledge we generate through research is also disseminated within the communities,” Kirigia says.   

BRN Brilliance is a multimedia series produced by the Black Research Network. The series spotlights Black-led interdisciplinary research, teaching and collaboration at the University of Toronto.