ABSTRACT
The land reform problem in Africa south of the Sahara differs from agrarian problems in other continents. East Africa had substantial upland areas with environment favourable to European colonisation and farming, and in South Africa, too, Europeans were more interested in land than in trade. In Southern Rhodesia, for example, the British South Africa Company purchased large areas and also established Native Reserves. Many Europeans, quick to call the Africans primitive and lazy, blame the natives, forgetting that white men exploited the African for centuries through slavery, colonisation and economic exploitation. European colonisation in Tropical Africa disturbed the equilibrium between Africans and the land, especially in East Africa. In Africa Europeans encountered land systems so different from their own that they often misinterpreted them. Experience in British Africa was pretty similar. Slavery disrupted the indigenous development of African society.
