Nairobi County is banking on the recently launched National Land Information Management System (NLIMS) dubbed ‘Ardhi Sasa’ to seal revenue leakages lost through non-collection of land rates. Hailing the system, Nairobi County Deputy Governor, Ann Kananu said the platform will allow the County to realize increased revenues from land rates, as well as improve urban planning.
According to Kananu, who is the Acting Nairobi County Governor, the platform will digitally map all land pieces and will complement City Hall’s new Geographical Information Systems (GIS)-based valuation roll. She added that the Lands and Urban Planning Department at City Hall has, over the years, been invaded by cartels and illegal land transactions, resulting into loss of revenue and land grabbing.
The GIS is a system designed to capture, store, analyse, manage, and present all types of geographical data.
Ms. Kananu said the two platforms will enable the Nairobi County Government to identify all property owners.
With land rates being one of the top five own source revenue earners for the county, City Hall plans to collect more than KSh. 3 billion in land rates once the new valuation roll, currently awaiting roll out at the end of an ongoing public participation, comes into effect. This will see revenue from rates increase from the current annual average return of slightly over KSh.2 billion to about KSh. 6 billion.
Presently, land owners pay rates based on 25 per cent of the underdeveloped value of the properties in 1982 valuation roll, which has starved the County Government additional levies from asset appreciation. However, the new valuation roll proposes land rates to be charged at between 0.1 per cent and 0.115 per cent of their present value.President Uhuru Kenyatta launched Ardhi Sasa on 27th April 2021. The President said the digital land information management system will bring efficiency and transparency to the land sector in the country. The new system, which marks the end of manual land transactions in Nairobi, was developed by a team of Kenyan techies over a three-year period and is designed to enhance the security of land records, speed up land transactions and curb fraud
