ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how the smallholder farming sector in Kenya expanded so dramatically that it became a model for rural development elsewhere in Africa. Until the 1950s, the priority of the colonial state in Kenya had been to protect European farmers from competition from African producers and to secure labour for the European farming sector. One of the most striking aspects of the economic development of the former European areas has been the difference in productivity between different types of farms and farmers. Multiple livelihoods constructed around migrancy can generate farm investment only when the household members earning an income away from the farm can deal with the problem of labour supervision. This issue often has a gender dimension. Local economies in some densely populated highland areas in Tanzania show the importance of local opportunities and the strategies rural households follow in response to them, as the contrast between the Uporoto and Uluguru mountains in Tanzania reveals.
