James Muricho says he began building a land information system in 2004 and has funded it alone since. Twenty-two years later, the Kenyan entrepreneur, who lives in Gävle in Sweden, is turning it into a service for people who buy land in Kenya, where disputes over title have cost families, lenders and developers years in court and, in some cases, their property.
The platform, Shambamap.org, is a web map. Visitors can search for a parcel by plot number or county, inspect its mapped boundary and, where the company has scanned and aligned them, open the historical survey sheets behind it. Looking costs nothing. Mr Muricho intends to earn money from what comes next: registering as an owner, requesting a “due diligence” check, and hiring the surveyors, lawyers and valuers who register as service providers. A parcel that all three have worked on can carry a “Verified” badge.
Mr Muricho says he has worked since 2002 for organisations that build land information systems, including Sweden’s land registration and mapping authority, Lantmäteriet. Such systems, which combine records management, mapping and workflow software, are usually built and run by governments. His argument is that African governments are poorly placed to build records people trust, and that an independent, privately run record can fill the gap.
Why a title deed is not enough
Kenya’s problem is not a lack of records, but uncertainty over what those records actually establish. For years a certificate of title was treated as close to conclusive. In April 2023 the Supreme Court shifted the emphasis in Dina Management v County Government of Mombasa, a case over a beachfront plot in Nyali that the county said was public land. The court held that a buyer who cannot show the title is sound from its root, in effect from the original allocation, cannot claim protection as an innocent purchaser. Legislation in 2025 restored the National Land Commission’s power to review titles while keeping protection for buyers without notice of a defect. Lawyers say how that provision will sit alongside the Supreme Court’s reasoning has yet to be tested.
Diligence therefore now means tracing a parcel’s history, in some cases back to independence in 1963 or earlier. Shambamap’s model is built around that task. Lawyers would run registry searches to reconstruct the chain of ownership, surveyors would check the parcel against survey records and on the ground, and valuers would test the price.
The risks are not abstract. In July 2025 the Environment and Land Court ruled for the family of James Kanyotu, Kenya’s late intelligence chief, in a dispute over a 500-acre estate at Ruiru, in Kiambu County. The court found that sales made after a 2010 court order barring dealings in the land were unlawful. Plots had been sold on to hundreds of buyers by a property company linked to Deliverance Churches Kenya, and many now face losing them. Shambamap’s promotional material describes the KES 10bn involved as losses. Press reports give it as the estimated value of the land, not a confirmed sum lost by buyers. The judgment is from a trial court.
What the state is doing
The Ministry of Lands’ answer is ArdhiSasa, the national land information system launched on 27 April 2021. Records for Nairobi and Murang’a counties have been digitised, and Isiolo and Mombasa are being brought on to the platform. From 20 July this year, transactions in newly added Mombasa blocks go through it exclusively. Alice Wahome, the lands cabinet secretary, has said since 2024 that digitising records nationwide would cost KES 35bn–40bn (roughly $270m–$310m) and take about five years if funded. Budget cuts have constrained the roll-out. In early September the Law Society of Kenya complained that the platform had been unavailable since 1 September, disrupting searches, transfers and registrations.
Mr Muricho’s prospectus puts the government’s cost at KES 36bn ($277.05 million) and says he is “rewriting the script of what is possible” with minimal funds. The comparison is not like for like. The ministry’s programme covers scanning, indexing and archiving title records and files, which form the legal register. Shambamap’s work is aligning historical map sheets to real-world coordinates and tracing parcel boundaries from them.
The distinction matters for what a buyer gets. An official search through ArdhiSasa is reported to cost KES 500–1,000, with practitioner guides differing on the amount. It tells a buyer what the register says. It does not say whether the entry is sound, which is the question Dina Management made central. Shambamap’s pitch is to fill that gap, and to publish the cadastral map data, as distinct from official searches, without charge.
How the platform works
Shambamap says it offers three things: free access to cadastral maps, a route to professional verification and, later, insurance. Viewing parcel boundaries and historical survey sheets costs nothing. Owners pay KES 2,000 to apply for registration and buyers pay KES 4,000 for a due diligence check. Surveyors, lawyers and valuers set their own fees, with a 1% charge going to the platform. The pricing page lists, for example, KES 20,000 a hectare plus 3% of land value for a fixed boundary survey, and KES 50,000–100,000 for a valuation.
A parcel is marked “Verified” when a registered surveyor, lawyer and valuer have each completed their work. The site says only land with a fixed boundary survey qualifies. The company says a verification does not confer ownership or override a court, and that insurance against defined risks depends on partnerships with licensed insurers, which the pricing page lists as “coming soon”.
Mr Muricho also plans an interface for banks and developers to use the data and, later, decision-support tools covering other African countries. Digitising historical survey sheets is under way, using paid surveyors and, according to the company’s pitch, volunteers.
How it differs from ArdhiSasa
ArdhiSasa is the government’s official land system and holds the legal register. Searches on it carry a fee. Shambamap is independent and says it does not replace the registry. It offers map data free of charge, pairs it with professional checks on a parcel’s history, and says it will limit the personal data it shows on owners. The company describes the platform as a complement to the official record.
However, the basis for publishing government survey sheets is a matter for Survey of Kenya and the Ministry of Lands. Kenya’s Data Protection Act also applies to organisations outside Kenya that handle the personal data of people there, in addition to the EU rules Shambamap cites.
Whether enough professionals sign up, whether the Ministry of Lands engages with the platform and whether a licensed insurer joins will decide if the idea works beyond a free map. Mr Muricho says Kenya is the pilot, with East and West Africa to follow.