Founder's Letter
A direct statement from Paul Rukwaro on what Litmus promises and what it does not.
To every law firm partner, SACCO credit manager, and diaspora professional reading this:
My name is Paul Rukwaro.
I founded Litmus because I kept watching property transactions in Kenya fall apart. Not because buyers or sellers were dishonest. But because the underlying evidence was impossible to verify quickly enough for any professional to rely on it with confidence.
Lawyers were filing on documents they had not independently checked. SACCOs were booking collateral they had never physically confirmed. Diaspora families were sending money for property that no one in Kenya had physically inspected on their behalf.
The information gap was real. It was costing people money and sometimes their cases.
What Litmus does
Litmus provides one thing: a verified, attested decision summary on a named parcel of land in Kenya.
A human verifier — with a name, a credential, and a liability — physically attends the Land Registry, cross-checks the NLIS record, and signs their findings. We deliver a PDF/A dossier within the stated timeline. That is the product. Nothing else.
What Litmus does not do
We do not provide legal opinions.
We do not provide valuations.
We do not tell you whether to buy, lend against, or accept a piece of land as security.
We do not score creditworthiness.
We do not issue reports suitable as expert witness testimony.
We are not a law firm, a surveyor, or a credit bureau.
Every engagement letter, every dossier, and every page of this Trust Center says so in plain language.
Why the refusal matters
The reason we refuse is not legal caution. It is because scope discipline is what keeps our findings honest.
When we verify ownership, we verify ownership — the whole process, from registry to field, end to end. When we refuse to opine on value, it is because value judgements introduce incentive distortions that corrupt the verification record.
A verifier who knows a deal depends on a favourable outcome is a verifier under pressure.
We pay our verifiers based on accuracy. We pay the same fee whether we attest or refuse to attest. That is not a policy — it is the operating mechanism that makes the attestation worth anything.
On what a named-verifier attestation means
Every dossier we deliver identifies the specific human who conducted the Land Registry inspection and field check. This is not a brand statement. It is a liability architecture.
The verifier's name is on the document. Their professional standing is attached to the finding. If the finding is wrong, the error can be traced, the person can be held accountable, and the process can be corrected.
Anonymous reports are cheap to produce and impossible to contest. Named attestations are expensive to produce badly.
On what to expect in a pilot
We offer a structured pilot: three property matters, delivered within the agreed timeline, at a fixed price. The pilot has a written success criterion.
If we meet it, we expect a conversion conversation. If we do not meet it, you do not owe us anything beyond the fixed fee.
We will not pressure you for a renewal before the pilot is complete. We will not ask you to recommend us to others before you have seen our work. We will not offer a discount in exchange for a public reference before we have earned one.
When Litmus makes a mistake
We will make mistakes. A verifier will misread a register entry. A file will be delayed at registry. A dossier will contain an error that only becomes visible when a transaction closes.
When that happens, we will tell you first. We will not wait for you to discover it. We will tell you what went wrong, what we checked, and what we are doing so it does not happen again.
We will not hide errors in footnotes or substitute corrected documents without marking the correction. We will keep a public refusal and correction log on this Trust Center so that anyone can see our track record, including our mistakes.
This is a trust product. The only thing it can offer that no software product can replicate is accountable human judgment backed by a transparent process.
If at any point you believe we have fallen short of that, write to me directly at paul@litmus.co.ke. I read every message.
Paul Rukwaro
Founder, Litmus Kenya
Nairobi, 2026