SOME TRENDS AND PROBLEMS OF AFRICAN LAND TENURE IN KENYA
| Author | R. O. Hennings |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1952.tb00954.x |
| Date | 01 October 1952 |
| Published date | 01 October 1952 |
122
JOURNAL OF AFRICAN ADMINISTRATION
SOME TRENDS AND PROBLEMS OF AFRICAN LAND
TENURE IN KENYA
By
R. O. Hennings, Secretary for Agriculture, Kenya.
THE extraordinary variations of race and climate in different parts of Kenya
give rise to widely varying problems of land usage and tenure. In the semi-desert
plains which occupy more than half the Colony the main task is still administrative
and political, to establish firmly the boundaries between the pastoral tribes and
sections, so that each section is assured of a fair share of the available water and
grazing, and the risk of tribal or sectional fighting is reduced to a minimum.
But nomadic pastoralists with a warlike tradition such as the Somalis do not easily
forego their dreams of better grazing and water a little further on, and it is only
by continual vigilance on the part of the administration and the police that each
section is kept more or less within its allotted territory. Here we are still in the
heroic age, and the traditional and actual basis of land tenure is simply force of arms.
At the other end of the scale are the relatively small areas of high rainfall and
fertility where over five million Africans hoe their various crops, in some places
alongside largely mechanized European farms. Here during the last few years two
methods of improved farming have been gaining ground, namely Small-Holdings
and Group Farms, both dependent on secure tenure of adequate holdings. There
could hardly be a greater contrast with conditions in the pastoral areas.
Small-Holdings.
Small-holdings! are, of course, nothing new, since officers of the Agricultural
Department were preaching this doctrine before the war in the Central and Nyanza
Provinces. But very few small-holdings were established then, and it is only in
recent years that the number has begun to increase more rapidly. Most districts
of the Central and Nyanza Provinces now have forty or fifty outstanding small-
holdings, and up to one or two hundred men who are making a reasonably good
effort to follow suit; and there are a few also in the Nandi-speaking districts of
the Rift Valley Province.
There are two initial requirements on which small-holdings must be based:
(a) the holding must be of adequate size depending on the type of land and
climate: for instance, five to eight acres is probably as much as a family can manage
in the fertile, high rainfall areas such as the Kikuyu Native Land Unit and a large
part of Nyanza Province,
but
in drier country, such as Makueni, twenty-five to
thirty acres is nearer the mark. And (b) the system of farming must be such as to
achieve two primary objectives, namely, an increase, or at the least no decrease, in
the fertility of the land, and a good living for the family. In endeavouring to
achieve these requirements we are faced by certain obstacles, of which the
seriousness varies from district to district; and in some places they are very
serious indeed.
To take
(b)
first, the systems of farming.
There
can be no single system which
will suit all the widely varying conditions of Kenya. Even assuming that all systems
should incorporate livestock, manure and alternation of grass and plough, as
ｷｾｬｬ
as good soil conservation, the best system for each particular locality may still
elude us and the fundamental question: what acreage is best suited for each
ecological zone, remains unanswered. So the first difficulty is what may be termed
1
For
convenience
the
familiar
term
..
small-holding"
is used
throughout
this article
and should be understood to
mean
awell-farmed economic holding for one family, i.e,
the
holding is capable of being worked by one family and giving
them
a good living.
In
Kenya
the average African family is five people of
ｷｨｯｭｾｯ
or
three
are adults.
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