Trees and Farm Boundaries: Farm Forestry, Land Tenure and Reform in Kenya

Dewees, Peter A.

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Title:	Trees and Farm Boundaries: Farm Forestry, Land Tenure and Reform in Kenya
Author:	Dewees, Peter A.
Year:	1995
Periodical:	Africa: Journal of the International African Institute
Volume:	65
Issue:	2
Pages:	217-235
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Kenya
Subjects:	Kikuyu customary law land law agroforestry Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Development and Technology Law, Human Rights and Violence
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/1161191
Abstract:	Tree cultivation and management are a common form of land use in high-potential areas of Kenya. While some of these practices are related to economic considerations, such as markets and prices for specific tree products, others were derived from or developed in parallel with customary practices. This article, which is based on archival materials and field research conducted in 1988 and 1989 in Murang'a and Kiambu Districts, traces the origins of contemporary demarcation practices in Kikuyu areas of Kenya, involving the planting of trees in hedges and windrows, from their customary antecedents. Customary law prescribed clear mechanisms for demarcating land to which rights of use had been acquired. These mechanisms, characterized principally by the planting of particular trees on the boundaries of landholdings, were given limited recognition by the colonial administration, and were subsequently incorporated in the contemporary body of land law which emerged as a result of the land reforms of the early 1960s. Land reforms tended to obscure customary distinctions between rights of control to trees and rights of use and access, by equating rights of control with rights of ownership. The result has been that rights of use and access, which had been guaranteed to the landless under customary law, were, for the most part, eliminated. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French.