The thesis presents a numerical study of magnetocrystalline anisotropies in dilute ferromagnetic semiconductors and transition metal systems intended to advance the current understanding of the microscopic origins of this relativistic effect and to contribute to the development of spintronic devices with new functionalities. The major part of the work surveys magnetocrystalline anisotropies in (Ga,Mn)As epilayers and compares the calculations to available experimental data. Our model is based on an envelope function description of the valence band holes and a spin representation for their kinetic-exchange interaction with localised electrons on Mn2+ ions, treated in the mean-field approximation. For epilayers with growth induced lattice-matching strains we study in-plane to out-of-plane easy axis reorientations as a function of Mn local-moment concentration, hole concentration, and temperature. Next we focus on the competition of in-plane cubic and uniaxial anisotropies. We add an in-plane shear strain to the effective Hamiltonian in order to capture measured data in bare, unpatterned epilayers, and we provide microscopic justification for this approach. The model is then extended by an in-plane uniaxial strain and used to directly describe experiments with magnetisation direction controlled by...