rights, agrarian structure, resource management, land use, and market access in both the state and
customary sectors.
The Overseas Development Agency (UK) has made considerable investments in Zambia's land
delivery system and government valuation department. Likewise, the Swedish International
Development Agency (SIDA) has made considerable investments in Zambia's land surveying system
and the analysis of economic ground rents. In recognition of their quality efforts and studies, this
report deals only superficially with land surveying and mapping. Readers are encouraged to contact
those agencies for their respective reports. Any future work by USAID in land tenure reform and
policy in Zambia should be tightly coordinated with their endeavors.
II. Colonial policy and settlement
Zambia's present system of State, Reserve, and Trust Lands is a legacy of the early colonial
period. Emissaries of Cecil Rhodes and the British South Africa Company arrived in Barotseland in
1884 to make a treaty with the then-paramount chief Lewanika. Treaties concluded with most of the
chiefs in Zambia during the 1890s guaranteed "African" rights to large areas of tribal land in exchange
for mineral concessions. The 1911 Northern Rhodesia Order in Council instructed the company to
assign to the African population (of Northern Rhodesia) sufficient land for their use and occupation.
Missionaries, miners, and traders began to settle, reaching a population of roughly 1,500 Europeans
by 1911. The company divested its control of the territory in 1924, and a governor was appointed by
the British sovereign. Under its agreement with the crown, the company retained its mineral rights
in exchange for territory. The 1928 Northern Rhodesia Order in Council formally established areas
of crown land to be reserved for white settlement under English Land Law and reserve areas for
African occupation under customary tenure arrangements. (Section 5, "Land Tenure" [p. 14ff, below]
covers in greater depth changes in statutory law from colonial times to the present.)
White settlement initially took place in a rather haphazard manner, first by the company and
later under crown governance. A series of Native Reserves Commissions between 1926 and 1928
established a more regularized system of settlement by whites, and the systematic evacuation of crown
land by African residents, who were forcibly crowded into reserves. Much land was left unclassified
(table 1.1), and came to be known as the "silent lands," set aside for the anticipated influx of white
settlers that never materialized (Bruce and Dorner 1982).
A postwar influx of ex-soldiers in 1919 brought the number of white farms along the rail line
to about 250. This figure remained static into the 1940s, resulting in substantial areas of crown land
left idle. Overcrowding in the reserves continued to worsen, leading in 1938 to the Pimm Commission
openly stating that the reserves policy had been a disaster. The 1947 Northern Rhodesia (Native Trust
Land) Order in Council provided for a fundamental reversal in policy. Whereas previously crown land
was reserved for white settlers, under the 1947 order it was defined as that amount required for a
more realistic and limited number of white settlers, with the remainder reserved for native "African"
occupation. Around 100 million acres of formerly unassigned land, forest and game land, and
unutilized crown land were transferred to native "Africans" in the name of a new land category, Trust
Lands. By 1950, the crown land reserved for Europeans had shrunk to 4.6 million acres, while the
land reserved for "Africans" (Reserve and Trust Lands) had increased to around 171 million acres.