Greater investment in agriculture is needed to reduce rural poverty and improve food security; but how investment is made, its context and conditions, is at least as important as how much is invested.

The violent struggle to control territory for economic, military and political reasons, coupled with high levels of rural poverty and the high concentration of land ownership among relatively few owners, has been one of the root causes of Colombia’s 50-year-old internal armed conflict. There has been an insatiable appetite amongst numerous actors in Colombia to gain and maintain control over land deemed critical to their varying interests.

Modeling of crop supply frequently adopts separate treatment of area and yield variables. The advantage of this approach is that it conveniently imposes the property of land being a quasi-fixed factor, at least on the aggregate. Given an agricultural land frontier, total supply of land may be fixed in the short run. Various crop multi-market models either ignore this property, thus foregoing the advantage of the area x yield formulation, or impose the aggregate land constraint in an ad hoc fashion.

The land question in Kenya has never been solved. Land is a pertinent source of livelihood, the problem has persisted and in a number of years caused chaos as people grow impatient. Over time, there have been complaints from various communities and recently, the past governments have sought to listen the ailing communities. The National Land Policy and the National Land Commission characterize efforts to remedy the continued situation bedeviling the African communities.

The land question in Kenya has never been solved. Land is a pertinent source of livelihood, the problem has persisted and in a number of years caused chaos as people grow impatient. Over time, there have been complaints from various communities and recently, the past governments have sought to listen the ailing communities. The National Land Policy and the National Land Commission characterize efforts to remedy the continued situation bedeviling the African communities.

On 27th August 2010, Kenya’s new constitution was promulgated. This set in place a process of implementation through the enactment of different legislations and setting up of new institutional frameworks as envisaged in the new constitutional dispensation. For the land sector, far reaching legal and institutional reforms are envisaged in Chapter 5 of the constitution. The Chapter on Land and Environment also lays out broad principles through which land and the environment shall be managed.

Meaningful citizen participation in governance is a key ingredient for public reforms that were instituted by the Constitution of Kenya (CoK) 2010. Article 1 (1) of the Constitution vests all sovereign power to the people of Kenya. This power can be expressed through direct participation or indirectly through elected representatives. In addition, various pieces of legislations anchoring devolution highlight the principles of citizen participation. Together, these constitutional and legislative provisions avail various platforms for citizen participation in devolved governance.

This handbook provides reference material for stakeholders in devolved governance, including policy makers at the county level and citizens, on social accountability and its relevance in devolved governance and the attainment of the objects of Kenya’s devolution as highlighted in Article 174 of the Constitution of Kenya 2010.

Devolution is one form of decentralization. Decentralization is defined as the process of dispersing power from the centre to lower levels of government. The other forms of decentralization include de-concentration, delegation and privatization. De-concentration transfers implementation powers to lower regions or sub- national units that implement decisions made at the centre. The responsibility for service delivery and decision making under delegation is passed to semiindependent territorial or sub-national units.

Public participation is an action or a series of actions a person takes to involve themselves in affairs of government or community. These activities include voting, attending meetings, participating in public or private political discussion or debate on issues, signing a petition on a desired government action or policy, volunteering in community activities and contributing money to a political party or candidate of one’s choice among other similar activities.

The constitution of Kenya 2010 established a devolved system of governance with 47 County governments. The constitution in schedule four also transfers service delivery in health, water and agriculture sector among other functions to county governments.

Land retains a focal point in Kenya's history. It was the basis upon which the struggle for independence was waged. It has traditionally dictated the pulse of our nationhood. It continues to command a pivotal position in the country's social, economic, political and legal relations. It is not surprising therefore that land has since the colonial times to-date, been the subject of myriad state managed policy and legal interventions. Neither is it surprising that it has been the subject of many Commissions of Inquiry.