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Probably most of you rent
or own a property to live in

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and that you certainly have neighbours.

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Most of you know that if you entered
your neighbour's property

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without permission,

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they could actually get you
arrested for trespassing.

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But that is enforceable here in Germany

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because all properties
are registered with the state

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and therefore they are protected by law.

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In many countries across the world,

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by contrast, up to 70% of the land
may be unregistered.

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But even for people
in some of these countries,

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where they have a registered land title,

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such land titles may not
be relevant to how they live.

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Consider, for example a Maasai family.

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They have 800 cattle, 500 goats and so on,

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donkeys and other animals.

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They depend on the land
for all their basic needs,

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for the water, for their food,
for the food for the animals,

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and even for medicines.

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For them, receiving
an individual land title

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may actually lead to losing
access to vital resources.

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An individual land title
may actually leave them worse off.

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So as Cari mentioned,
I worked for a project.

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It is called "its4land."

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In this project

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we are creating innovative tools
for land tenure registration.

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Our goal is to reduce the high
percentage of unregistered land,

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try to bring it to zero,

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using new tools that can allow us
to rapidly map property.

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The project involves eight partners,

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but they are spread across six countries.

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I work for the Institute
for Geoinformatics, here in Muenster.

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So when we were invited to join
the project, to start the project,

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I was really excited

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because the target countries
are Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia,

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which are all in East Africa,

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and that's not so far away
from my own home country of Malawi.

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We embarked on this journey,
myself as part of this team,

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to create a small piece of software


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that allows communities,
at a local scale, to document their land

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using hand-drawn maps.

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For example, this one here.

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Our software should be able to read
and process the hand-drawn sketches,

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understand what is drawn in them,

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and then organize them,

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so they can be used with
other data about land.

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This was our goal


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and with that in mind we set to work.

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We created some preliminary designs
and built a prototype.

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We even tested our workflows
on a site here in Germany.

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But fast forward a few months:

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We arrived in the Muslim Maasai County
of southern Kenya called Kajiado.

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Almost as soon as we arrived


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all of our plans which we have made,
what we have planned to the minute,

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started to fall apart.

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So all our assumptions
were actually basically wrong.

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It happens when we arrived there,


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there was a drought.

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The people needed more time to go
and find water, find food for the animals.

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In fact on the first day
that we were there

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we actually caught up with the people
at a local water hole.

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That was the only place
you can meet people at the time of day.

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So we jumped straight into work,
we were standing under a tree,

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researchers and the people
from the community,

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and my colleague, Serene,
from the University of Leuven

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started with her part of the interview.

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She had prepared
an unstructured interview.

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She started asking questions,


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but by the time, she went from the first
to the second to the third question,

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I started getting nervous.

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Because I was standing next to her,

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but the thing is I had a ten-page
questionnaire in my hand,

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and I have prepared
everything to the minute.

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I thought to myself how I am going
to perform a very structured interview

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in this very dynamic scenario.

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Before I finished thinking,
already it was my turn to ask questions.

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She went, "It's your turn!"
I think oh my god.

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Anyway, I put out my questionnaire.
Here is my first question.

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I read the first question.

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The interpreter standing next to me,
he translates it to the Maasai language.

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Then there was a couple
of seconds silence.

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Then after the silence,
everybody bursts into laughter.

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Okay, what funny thing did I say?

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I was taken aback for a moment
because I knew my question was plain.

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There were about 15 to 20 men
standing around me,

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and there were about five others
who had just walked 30 kilometres

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with their animals from Tanzania,
so it is across the border,

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just to graze the animals in the area.

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What do I do?

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I just looked back down
on my questionnaire

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and I read the second question;
said forget the first.

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But by the time I raised my head again

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I realized that it wasn't always
the same faces around.

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It was like people are standing there,
and they'd move to talk to someone else,

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and then they come back

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and maybe look at
the animals a little bit.

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I thought this could mean a few things,

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but either, this excercise is
completely boring for these guys,

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or they are extremely busy.

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I went with the second, of course,
because they had more immediate concerns.

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We found them in their place of work,

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which that was.

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So I decided: screw this.

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I put my questionnaire back in my pocket

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and just started having
conversations with them.

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So we were just standing
and having little chats.

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Through that we learned quite a lot,

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for example, we learned that the Maasai
never really traditionally owned land,

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something we had a clue about,

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but not in the modern sense
of owning land, right?

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So this was always something
that is imposed on them

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and it goes back to the colonial era.

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Most of the things that they told us

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were wrapped in little stories.

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It wasn't like plain facts.
It was story after story.

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For example, there was one young man
who came up to us and told us a story

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that demonstrates
a certain loose relationship

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of the Maasai with their land.

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He had uncovered an anomaly,

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he had uncovered something wrong

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in the boundary of a big piece of land

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that belongs to one family.

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When I say family, of course, I don't mean
husband, wife, and children.

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I mean like 10 or more households
of brothers, cousins, and so on,

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living together on a piece of land
and sharing all their resources, right?

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What had happened is

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they have sort of other
neighbouring parcels of land, right?

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The people in the families
in those neighbouring parcels

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had actually subdivided their land

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and then they had sold
parts of those pieces to other people.

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In the process somehow
the boundaries have been moved,

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so in favor of the new plots.

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So their was a big chunk of land
that was lost to this family

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that was living together.

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The problem, of course, is that


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the discovery that was good
that they found out

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was actually 12 years too late.

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Because in Kenya you can only challenge

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the issuance of land titles
within a period of 12 years.

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And these changes had been registered
with the state more than 20 years before.

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How could this happen?

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How did they not discover this?

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It so happens that as they live together,
they knew about the boundaries,

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but they never really considered them
as a barrier to movement,

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as a restriction,
as if you can't go there.

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When they graze their animals,
or when they go to collect firewood,

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or do other activities on the land,
they just crisscrossed on there.

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It didn't matter whose parcel
that really was.

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And so sadly, of course,
when changes are happening

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in that adjacent parcels,

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they never really bothered to check
what is going on with the boundaries

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and with the actual information
that is registered.

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So anyway, we went on
with different conversations.

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Later on we asked the people
to draw us some maps

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to illustrate the things
that they were telling us,

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the stories that they were telling us.

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Here is an example:

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This is a Maasai homestead.

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A Maasai family lives in
a circular arrangement of huts,

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which is called an enkang.

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Usually in the middle
they'll have a circular region,

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an enclosure or several enclosures,

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where they keep their domestic
animals at night.

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This is for protection from wild animals.

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The traditional Maasai hut
in their language is called an inkaji,

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or in plural it is called inkajijik.

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It looks like this from the outside.

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The huts usually belong to the wives.

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So there will be one man for the enkang
and there are several wives,

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and each wife will have
her own little hut for her family.

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Every wife also has an entrance,

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so a gate entering into the enkang.

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And she is responsible for that gate.

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She is responsible
for opening it in the morning

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and then closing it in the night.

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These gates are guarded
by a big branch of a tree,

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which is called an oltim.

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Once the oltim is placed
inside of this gate

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then no one can enter it,
especially the men.

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The men cannot walk over this oltim

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because in their culture
it is considered taboo.

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And there are also subtle rules about
which gates can be used for what purpose.

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For example, you have a gate
which is for goats only,

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and one of the other entrances
would be for people,

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and maybe another one
would be for like cattle.

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The point I want to make here is that

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the Maasai homestead has a really
complex spacial and social structure,

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and this structure
is very rich with meaning.

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Unfortunately, in many modern
or current information systems

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for registering land,
this rich meaning is lost.

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The focus is more on parcels,

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the way you do it here in Germany,

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boundaries, and coordinates.

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When we asked them the first time
to draw this maps for us, we asked them,

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those were the stupid questions
in the first interview,

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it was like could you draw
a map of your land?

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And the guys were like:
What the hell are you talking about?

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After we came back from the trip,

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I also asked myself the same question.

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What is the purpose of that drawings
that we are looking for?

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Obviously, we have to change our strategy.

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We spent about four month here
and then went right back.

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This time we had organized
special workshops;

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we actually organized things
ahead of time.

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We had workshops for men,
workshops for women,

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and during the discussions
people talked about

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what I thought were
important things for them;

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for example, how do we preserve
our water resources,

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or where are the wild animals
usually found.

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What are the locations
of important species of trees,

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or other kinds of vegetation?

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Something we learned during the time,
during the discussion, was that

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the elders seem to have
a certain special skill

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to read the landscape.

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For example, they will look,
they observe the vegetation

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00:12:07,148 --> 00:12:10,358
and then they go like
let's drill for water here.

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Of course, the younger men
don't quite understand it


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I guess it only comes with experience.

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But I thought that this
was a deep knowledge

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and we wanted to capture that knowledge.

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We wanted to get it in our maps.

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So we also asked them to draw
some sketch maps for us.

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For example, this is one map.

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This was drawn by a group of women.

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You see here some circles.

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Those represent the homesteads.

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You also see there are some mountains.

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The map is quite detailed,
probably not very visible from here;

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but where do we get the water,

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where are the wild animals,

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and all sorts of features;

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where is the main river in our region.

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And in the corners


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there are little triangles which represent
the boundary of their ranch.

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We are able to capture
very rich information

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which you do not find in official records
together with the representation

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of the official information
about the boundaries of their property.

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00:13:08,381 --> 00:13:12,381
We can put this boundaries
in relation to the features

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00:13:12,414 --> 00:13:14,884
that are important
for them in their lives.

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We started off, we wanted to create
a small tool that digitizes maps,

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maps of land, land parcels.

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But in the process we learned

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that it is not just about
a piece of ground.

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It is about relationships
between people and their land,

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which are often not as simple
or not compatible with the way

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we look at land as the property you hold,
an individual title and it is mine.

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And in the process also we learned
that for our technology to be relevant

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we have to answer questions
that matter to the community

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That is where we are at this journey

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and its a journey really to bring
the land information and the power

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of documenting land to the people.

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What we have been able to do so far,

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is with everything we learned,
with all the concepts we've gathered,

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we have a software tool,
right now, or a prototype,

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which is able to extract
meaningful digital objects

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from this hand-drawn maps.

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It looks like a bit of gibberish;

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but those are the mountains,

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the different homesteads and so on.

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With this rich information 
we can then integrate it

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with existing maps, to create
new maps, new richer maps,

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and new richer interactions
with the community generated data.

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I must show this last picture

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because it is sort of very special for me.

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At the end of the last workshop, sort of 
flipping of roles, the women called me

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outside saying: "Hey, come!"
and I walked out and said: "What's up?"

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So: "Stand here."`
They presented me with a gift.

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It was a hand-beaded Maasai bracelet.

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One of the women said: "I made this. 


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I thought it would be
a nice gift for you."

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That was special.

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For me it marked the end
of the beginning of this relationship.

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which I hope it would be
a lasting relationship

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with these very, very amazing people

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who shared their time and knowledge
with us in Kajiado County

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to which I am looking forward to go back.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)