Fertile African lands colonisers stole from indigenous communities

Photo: Kenya film commission

Kenya

RELATED STORIES

Dorie Miller, the black messman who defied segregation to save lives at Pearl Harbour

Five things Ivory Coast's first president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, will be remembered for

The legendary exploits of black war hero Salem Poor who helped found America

Read Martin Luther King’s speech endorsing the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott

To date, Kenya has complicated land disputes that are largely as a result of the scramble for its fertile lands by the Germans and British. The lands of Kenya were identified as very fertile and vital for large-scale farming mainly by the British, who then decided to take them from the indigenous people to generate profit.

In 1884, the British sent Harry Johnson to Kenya. Under the guise of wanting to live with the people and study them, Mr Johnson set up the British East Africa Company which then drove away indigenous Kenyans from their properties. The company took control over the lands, establishing large-scale farms and making the people work on them without good pay.

The Britsih claimed they signed treaties with the indigenous people, something disproven by research. In 1902, the British established the Hut Tax of 1902, that forced indigenous people to pay for space their huts occupied for a legal permit. It was another way of claiming more lands for their booming large-scale farming industry.