Central lands registry permanently shut in digital shift

The central lands registry in Nairobi has been shut permanently after its operations were migrated to an online platform, allowing for remote access to services.

Lands Cabinet Secretary Faridah Karoney said all documents stored at the registry will be transferred to their respective home counties while those related to properties in the capital city will be moved to the Nairobi registry.

“The records will be taken to their home registries. The records concerning Nairobi will be transferred to Nairobi Registry,” she said adding that the ministry is shifting its service delivery to an online platform dubbed National Lands Information Management System (NLIMS) or Ardhisasa.

Ms Karoney said this will mark the end of manual processing of documents in Nairobi which created room for fraud.

Most of the records at the central registry are linked to land parcels initially owned by colonial white settlers in areas such as Nyeri, Nanyuki, Eldoret, Kapsabet, and Nakuru. It also has records of Nairobi’s prime areas, initially occupied by the colonial government masters, such as Karen and Westlands.

The CS said Ardhi Sasa is manned round-the-clock by a team of 40 staffers who are equally split on two day and night shifts. The team helps clients to register and transact in the online portal which targets to enhance the security of land records.