The socio-economic impact of land tenure reform in the former African areas of Kenya, 1950-1987

Abstract

During the 1950s, the British colonial administration in Kenya introduced fundamental and wide ranging land tenure reforms in those areas of the country which were inhabited by traditional African societies. African customary land tenure rights were to be replaced with registered individual titles to land as a result of these reforms. The official arguments tor reform were ones of development and stressed the need to modernize farming in the African areas of the country. Colonial officials argued that African customary land tenure relations constituted the main constraint on development in the African areas and that their replacement with registered individual ownership of land was a pre-condition to any development initiatives in t.hese areas. When Kenya became politically independent in 1963, the post-colonial African government continued implementing the as part of its rural development strategy so that today most land in the country has been converted from customary to registered individual ownership. The thesis inquires in greater detail into the: arguments which were advance d to justify the introduction of the reforms and evaluates t.he socioeconomic impact they have had since their introduction. It finds that, contrary to official arguments, the introduction of the reforms in the 1950s was motivated equally by political considerations as economic ones. Land tenure reform was supposed to be used by the colonial government as a counter-insurgency weapon in the fight against radical African nationalism and to ensure the continuity of the colonial economy into the post-colonial era by promoting the more prosperous but politically conservative elements within society. Secondly, the economic underdevelopment of the African areas observed by exponents of the r e f o r ms in the 1950s was more the product of repressive colonial eonomic and land policies than a bad system of land tenure of itself.