Nothing More Serious
Nothing More Serious
Mortgaging and Struggles over Ancestral Land
This chapter explores the encounters between claims made to land and positions on land that others associate with their deceased forebears. It looks at the case of Luo, for example, where during Jomo Kenyatta's presidency, loans were directly mainly to the Gikuyu-dominated Central Province, whereas Luo received far fewer than their portion of the population would justify. It looks at the cultural misunderstandings surrounding finance in rural Africa, particularly the misunderstandings behind attempts to use land as loan collateral in places where personal and family identities revolve around lineage settlements and burial sites. It examines public lending in Kenya for farming on collateral security, as well as some of the unhappiness that the mortgaging of homes and farmlands is causing in western Kenya and elsewhere in tropical Africa.
Keywords: Luo, Jomo Kenyatta, Gikuyu-dominated Central Province, rural Africa, cultural misunderstandings, lineage settlements, burial sites, mortgaging of homes
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