Land and labour in Mijikenda agriculture, Kenya, 1850-1985

The Mijikenda are a Bantu people living in the hinterland of southern Kenya. This paper examines two key resources of Mijikenda agriculture that have undergone profound transformations during the period under study (1850-1985): land and labour. External pressures and internal processes have completely changed the availability, administration and productivity of these two resources. During the last two centuries, the Mijikenda have been transformed from shifting cultivators into traders, have changed their settlement pattern, modified land tenure rules, adopted new crops like maize and coconut, and taken up modern techniques. The paper is based partly on the experience of four years (1981-1985) fieldwork among Mijikenda farmers in the area around Kaloleni