Includes government custodianship of public land, what land is targeted?, how do Kenya’s elites access land?, identifying the impacts and victims of the land-grabbing phenomenon, policy developments and current debates on Kenya’s land question.

In 2005 the Government, aiming to encourage more intensive forms of agriculture to supply new markets, passed a land law which brought all marshes and river valleys under State control. In 1997 the State leased 3,100 hectares of land in the Nyacyonga and Nyabarongo marshes outside the capital Kigali to a Ugandan-based enterprise, the Madhvani Group, which also acquired control over the country’s sole sugar mill. Most of the local people who had previously exploited the marshland experienced its takeover by the company as a dispossession.