Mosquitoes and a tropical climate have not been the only deterrents to alien settlement in certain parts of Anglophonic West Africa. In many countries, even before the independence movement, restrictions were placed upon non-African use and purchase of real estate. The general opposition to permanent colonization by large real estate holdings in the area supported this type of regulation.2 Now that insecticides and air conditioning units have reduced the effectiveness of the natural deterrents, only the laws remain.

The Wills and Inheritance Act,1 passed by the Malawi Parliament in November, 1967, is an attempt to provide a comprehensive scheme of interlocking succession provisions applicable to members of all racial groups. This is an ambitious objective and there is little need to stress here the numerous difficulties which stand in the way of its attainment. The greatest of these difficulties is to formulate a set of rules for those persons hitherto subject to diverse systems of customary law. Here the need is not only for a scheme which strikesan acceptable balance between the contemporary demands of the customary heirs and those of the immediate family, but also for one which is sufficiently flexible to accommodate the further changes which are bound to take place. Preferably the new rules will also be effective to guide future developments along lines which are deemed to be socially desirable. A further difficulty is to combine with this scheme the rules applicable to those persons who were not previously subject to customary law. Lastly, the system as a whole must be simple enough, in the case of small estates at least, to be administered in the Local Courts. It is against these requirements that the new Act will be measured in this note.