The fertile highlands of central Kenya were among the most productive agricultural land in the world. They were also home to the Kikuyu, Kipsigis, Nandi and other communities who had farmed them for generations. The British colonial government reserved these highlands exclusively for white settlers. Africans were removed from their own land, pushed onto what were called Native Reserves, and then taxed so that they had to work for white farmers to pay the tax. It was dispossession made policy. The land question that fuelled the Mau Mau uprising was born here.