Village Land Demarcation

Village land demarcation activity was done to define the village administrative boundaries. This is important step before starting the village land use planning exercise. The challenges of village Land demarcation activities were immense. The land issue in the Meru and Maasai communities is very sensitive due to complexity and historical issues related to land tenure. The villagers decided the boundaries of the Villages to follow the colonial settler farms that were in the old map projections (TTM), so we had to re-project the geographical data using free GIS software to UTM ARC 60. We had to seek for data related to the boundaries of the settler farms, West Kilimanjaro Ranch, Arusha National Park and the Meru District Council boundaries as stipulated in the Government Notice (GN). Getting all this old data was a big challenge and it takes a lot of time and other resources. After all the challenges and with right projections of the coordinates, the beacons were set on the village boundary points. The village leaders, village land adjudication committees, the district surveyor and representatives from institutions such as West Kilimanjaro Ranch were involved. out of this exercise, Village maps were produced.

Legal and Institutional issues related to Village Land Demarcation.
- Village Councils
- Village land adjudication committees
- Village Assembly
- District Council
- Ministry of Land and human Settlements Development
Important documents
- National Land Policy, 1995
- Village Land Act, 1999
- Village Land Act Regulations, 2002
- Village Land Act Guidelines developed by ministry of land.
Important trainings
- Stakeholders workshop - target (all stakeholders)
- Village land Act, 1999 - Target (district staff, ward, villages)
- Village boundary agreements procedures and processes -Target ( Village councils, Village Land Committees)
- Basic GIS training - Target (district council staff)
- Compass use and basic Map reading - Target (village game scouts [VGS]), village leaders