Legal Histories of Land Tenure in Africa

The legal systems of most African countries are a legacy of past European colonial powers, which at independence stayed largely intact, protecting private property rights and land tenure inequalities. The former British colonies covered a larger combined land area than any other colonial power, and this article applies a legal history approach to land law “genealogies” in four of them: Nigeria (West Africa), South Africa, Kenya (East Africa), and Zambia (Central Africa). The three professions most involved with land (law, surveying, and planning) were part of colonial power structures, associated with violent evictions, the “dual mandate” separating private property rights from African land tenure, and separate governance arrangements for urban areas that contributed to unplanned peri-urban settlements.