Soil water retention curves (SWRCs) form an essential component of frameworks coupling the hydromechani-cal behaviour of unsaturated soils. The curves describe how suction changes with variables such as degree of saturation, void ratio and volumetric/gravimetric water content. SWRCs can be determined from incremental-ly drying initially saturated reconstituted samples to a final residual state, thus developing the primary drying curve (PDC). The primary wetting curve (PWC) is established from subsequent incremental wetting from re-sidual state and is hysteretic compared with the PDC. SWRCs for reconstituted, high-plasticity, tropical clays from Africa (Sudan and South Africa) will be produced using suction measuring instrument, a dew point po-tentiometer. The development of SWRCs under drying will be presented and discussed along with details concerning volumetric changes and cracking during drying. In order to investigate the uniqueness of the PDC and the effect of initial void ratio, SWRCs will determined for samples formed by consolidation under ap-plied energy levels