Resource Struggle, Resultant Realities and the Future of Maragoli Land Use
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Date
2020
Authors
Muhandale, Alex Amisi
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Journal of Agricultural Policy
Abstract
Land has remained one of the most basic and valuable economic resource right from the precolonial
to the post independent Kenyan society. The success or failure of every society is always
pegged on how prudent the society manages the resources within its reach in the midst of changes,
challenges and opportunities that time and space avails every single moment. Being part of the
Kenyan society, the Maragoli community has never been left out of the land question that has
troubled Kenya over time. The pre-colonial Maragoli society had a land tenure system which was
characterized by communal control of land together with its resources and practiced individual
land ownership. Though land was communally owned at the general level, it was individually
owned and tilled at the family level. The basis of land administration was the customary law
executed by the elders who had the overall powers over the production resource. Through colonial
policies such as alienation of the Africans’ land, confiscation of livestock, introduction of taxes
and the cash economy; all these mechanisms brought about disequilibrium in the Maragoli precolonial
land use. With this in mind therefore, this paper examined the nature and realities in
resource struggle and the future of such struggles especially in regard to land use in the postindependence
Kenya, using the case of the Maragoli. Through the articulation theory, this paper
demonstrates that the interaction between the pre-colonial Maragoli land use practices and the
colonial land policies greatly impacted on the Maragoli socio-economic and political structures.
Due to the cash crop economy, the traditional Maragoli communal attitudes towards land as a
resource are fading out resulting into individual emphasis on land use. This individual emphasis
on land use is the major cause of uneconomical subdivision of land, insecurity and increased
poverty. It is from the above perspective that the paper analyses the post-independence Maragoli
land situation, some of the key causes of uneconomical subdivision of land and the possible
solutions.
Description
A research article published in Journal of Agricultural Policy
Keywords
Land use patterns, land use systems, land tenure system
Citation
Muhandale, A. A. (2020). RESOURCE STRUGGLE, RESULTANT REALITIES AND THE FUTURE OF MARAGOLI LAND USE. Journal of Agricultural Policy, 3(1), 106-118.