Colonialism not to blame.

Waiting for my flight from Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to Entebbe, Uganda, I bought a copy of African Business to read. It seemed very prescient of your reader from Germany, Ola Ahoofe Jr, to write about land ownership ('Letters', African Business, August/September 2009). While I was reading the magazine, news was breaking on the CNN channel playing in the lounge, of serious disturbances in Kampala. Vivid coverage was being broadcast of the Ugandan police and army being called out to quell street demonstrations protesting the government's decision to deny the Baganda King permission to visit an area of the country that has a disputed provenance.

I do not know whether or not the region falls under the King's historical sphere of influence, but what this recent upheaval indicates is that, even in a reasonably stable country, while many disputes over land ownership originate from the mistakes of the colonial administrations, some disputes actually date back earlier, to the pre-colonial era. I would suggest to Mr Ahoofe that blaming Africa's land issues solely on colonialism is a simplistic analysis, and dangerous too. If you fail to identify the root cause of a problem, you are unlikely to find a solution.

Albert Mwangi

Tororo, Uganda