A Decade of Tanzania

A Decade of Tanzania
Author: Kurt Hirschler
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2019-07-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004407871

Tanzania is widely recognized as a rather exceptional case of an African country that has seen political continuity and stability for more than five decades and has not experienced any major conflicts as has been the case elsewhere on the continent. Major political transformations – such as the transformation from a socialist one-party state to a market-oriented multi-party system – were initiated from above and controlled by the Revolutionary Party CCM, which has ruled the country since it gained independence in 1961. Despite its peaceful development and steady economic growth rates over the past 15 years, Tanzania has remained a low-income country with a huge majority of its people living in poverty. This volume contains the original country chapters on Tanzania from the Africa Yearbook. Politics, Economy and Society South of the Sahara, covering the period 2005 – 2017. It embraces the entire 10-year presidency of President Kikwete and the first two years under the current President Magufuli.

Performing the Nation

Performing the Nation
Author: Kelly Askew
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2002-07-28
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0226029816

Since its founding in 1964, the United Republic of Tanzania has used music, dance, and other cultural productions as ways of imagining and legitimizing the new nation. Focusing on the politics surrounding Swahili musical performance, Kelly Askew demonstrates the crucial role of popular culture in Tanzania's colonial and postcolonial history. As Askew shows, the genres of ngoma (traditional dance), dansi (urban jazz), and taarab (sung Swahili poetry) have played prominent parts in official articulations of "Tanzanian National Culture" over the years. Drawing on over a decade of research, including extensive experience as a taarab and dansi performer, Askew explores the intimate relations among musical practice, political ideology, and economic change. She reveals the processes and agents involved in the creation of Tanzania's national culture, from government elites to local musicians, poets, wedding participants, and traffic police. Throughout, Askew focuses on performance itself—musical and otherwise—as key to understanding both nation-building and interpersonal power dynamics.

Political Thought and the Public Sphere in Tanzania

Political Thought and the Public Sphere in Tanzania
Author: Emma Hunter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2015-04-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316300102

Political Thought and the Public Sphere in Tanzania is a study of the interplay of vernacular and global languages of politics in the era of decolonization in Africa. Decolonization is often understood as a moment when Western forms of political order were imposed on non-Western societies, but this book draws attention instead to debates over universal questions about the nature of politics, concept of freedom and the meaning of citizenship. These debates generated political narratives that were formed in dialogue with both global discourses and local political arguments. The United Nations Trusteeship Territory of Tanganyika, now mainland Tanzania, serves as a compelling example of these processes. Starting in 1945 and culminating with the Arusha Declaration of 1967, Emma Hunter explores political argument in Tanzania's public sphere to show how political narratives succeeded when they managed to combine promises of freedom with new forms of belonging at local and national level.

Silent Violence

Silent Violence
Author: Vinay R. Kamat
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2013-12-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816599203

Silent Violence engages the harsh reality of malaria and its effects on marginalized communities in Tanzania. Vinay R. Kamat presents an ethnographic analysis of the shifting global discourses and practices surrounding malaria control and their impact on the people of Tanzania, especially mothers of children sickened by malaria. Malaria control, according to Kamat, has become increasingly medicalized, a trend that overemphasizes biomedical and pharmaceutical interventions while neglecting the social, political, and economic conditions he maintains are central to Africa’s malaria problem. Kamat offers recent findings on global health governance, neoliberal economic and health policies, and their impact on local communities. Seeking to link wider social, economic, and political forces to local experiences of sickness and suffering, Kamat analyzes the lived experiences and practices of people most seriously affected by malaria—infants and children. The persistence of childhood malaria is a form of structural violence, he contends, and the resultant social suffering in poor communities is closely tied to social inequalities. Silent Violence illustrates the evolving nature of local responses to the global discourse on malaria control. It advocates for the close study of disease treatment in poor communities as an integral component of global health funding. This ethnography combines a decade of fieldwork with critical review and a rare anthropological perspective on the limitations of the bureaucratic, technological, institutional, medical, and political practices that currently determine malaria interventions in Africa.

Taste of Tanzania

Taste of Tanzania
Author: Miriam Malaquias
Publisher: Miroki Pub
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2021-02-02
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 9780988735903

Offers more than 130 colorful authentic Swahili recipes appropriate for even the greenest of at-home cooks. While most ingredients can be found in grocery stores, this book offers alternatives for those that may be more commonly available in Africa. In addition, many of the delicious recipes call for the freshest of ingredients, offering healthy and flavorful options for the everyday diet. The food taste is unique and simple to prepare. Original.

Tanzania in Transition

Tanzania in Transition
Author: Kjell J. Havnevik
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2010
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9987080863

This book is the first comprehensive contribution to understanding the character of important societal transitions in Tanzania during Benjamin Mkapa's presidency (1995 2005). The analyses of the trajectory of these transitions are conducted against the background of the development model of Tanzanian's first president, Julius Nyerere (1961 1985), a model with lasting influence on the country. This approach enables an understanding of continuities and discontinuities in Tanzania over time in areas such as development strategy an ideology, agrarian-land, gender and forestry issues, economic liberalization, development assistance, corruption and political change. The period of Mkapa's presidency is particularly important because it represents the first phase of Tanzania's multi- party political system. Mkapa's government initially faced a gloomy economic situation. Although Mkapa's crusade against corruption lost direction, his presidency was characterised by relatively high growth rates and a stable macro-economy. Rural and agrarian transitions were dominated by diversification rather than productivity growth and transformation. Rural attitudes in favour of land markets emerged only slowly but formal land disputes showed more respect for women's rights. Some space emerged for widening local participation in forest management, but rural dynamics was mainly found in trading settlements feeding on economic liberalization and artisanal mining. The transitions documented and analysed of Mkapa's presidency, however, indicate only limited transformational change. Rural poverty is therefore likely to remain deep and the sustainability of economic development to be at risk in the future. Mkapa was, however, able to protect the legacy of peace and political stability of Nyerere, but there were nevertheless important challenges to the first multiparty elections and governance, and particularly in Zanzibar. The post- script (covering 2005 2010), indicates that the incumbent president, Jakaya Kikwete, has yet to prove that he can change this legacy of Mkapa. The contributions to the eleven chapters of this book are evenly shared between Tanzanian, Nordic and other European researchers with a long-term commitment to Tanzanian development research. The book is dedicated to the youth of Tanzania.

Wielding the Ax

Wielding the Ax
Author: Thaddeus Raymond Sunseri
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 0821418645

Finalist for the African Studies Association’s 2010 Melville J. Herskovits Award. Forests have been at the fault lines of contact between African peasant communities in the Tanzanian coastal hinterland and outsiders for almost two centuries. In recent decades, a global call for biodiversity preservation has been the main challenge to Tanzanians and their forests. Thaddeus Sunseri uses the lens of forest history to explore some of the most profound transformations in Tanzania from the nineteenth century to the present. He explores anticolonial rebellions, the world wars, the depression, the Cold War, oil shocks, and nationalism through their intersections with and impacts on Tanzania’s coastal forests and woodlands. In Wielding the Ax, forest history becomes a microcosm of the origins, nature, and demise of colonial rule in East Africa and of the first fitful decades of independence. Wielding the Ax is a story of changing constellations of power over forests, beginning with African chiefs and forest spirits, both known as “ax–wielders,” and ending with international conservation experts who wield scientific knowledge as a means to controlling forest access. The modern international concern over tropical deforestation cannot be understood without an awareness of the long–term history of these forest struggles.

Africa's Turn?

Africa's Turn?
Author: Edward Miguel
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 67
Release: 2009-03-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0262260999

Signs of hope in sub-Saharan Africa: modest but steady economic growth and the spread of democracy. By the end of the twentieth century, sub-Saharan Africa had experienced twenty-five years of economic and political disaster. While “economic miracles” in China and India raised hundreds of millions from extreme poverty, Africa seemed to have been overtaken by violent conflict and mass destitution, and ranked lowest in the world in just about every economic and social indicator. Working in Busia, a small Kenyan border town, economist Edward Miguel began to notice something different starting in 1997: modest but steady economic progress, with new construction projects, flower markets, shops, and ubiquitous cell phones. In Africa's Turn? Miguel tracks a decade of comparably hopeful economic trends throughout sub-Saharan Africa and suggests that we may be seeing a turnaround. He bases his hopes on a range of recent changes: democracy is finally taking root in many countries; China's successes have fueled large-scale investment in Africa; and rising commodity prices have helped as well. Miguel warns, though, that the growth is fragile. Violence and climate change could derail it quickly, and he argues for specific international assistance when drought and civil strife loom. Responding to Miguel, nine experts gauge his optimism. Some question the progress of democracy in Africa or are more skeptical about China's constructive impact, while others think that Miguel has underestimated the threats represented by climate change and population growth. But most agree that something new is happening, and that policy innovations in health, education, agriculture, and government accountability are the key to Africa's future. Contributors Olu Ajakaiye, Ken Banks, Robert Bates, Paul Collier, Rachel Glennerster, Rosamond Naylor, Smita Singh, David N. Weil, and Jeremy M. Weinstein

Building a Peaceful Nation

Building a Peaceful Nation
Author: Paul Bjerk
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2015
Genre: History
ISBN: 1580465056

A compelling account of the establishment of Tanzania's stable and ambitious government in the face of external threats and internal turmoil.