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Post-Colonial Migration: Virtual Culture, Urban Farming and New Peri-Urban Growth in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 1975–2000

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2011

Geoffrey Ross Owens
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Abstract

Using ethnographic and historical approaches, this article examines unplanned, peri-urban settlements on Dar es Salaam's northern and western fringe, where urban farming is central to many residents’ household economy. Contrasting with conventional models of African urban migration, these new districts were established by a vanguard of educated urban professionals, utilizing farming as an economic diversification strategy. Despite disjunctures arising through decolonization and implementation of state socialism in the 1960s and 1970s, this peri-urban vanguard not only engaged in agricultural activities reminiscent of regions on the borderlands of Tanzania, but also contributed to the reproduction of configurations of socio-economic inequality characteristic of other kinds of urban communities. With critical infrastructural improvements and a pool of urban labourers supporting their endeavours, these districts attracted additional, economically influential urban in-migrants following capitalist reforms following the implementation of the Zanzibar Declaration in 1991.

En mêlant les approches ethnographique et historique, cet article examine des peuplements périurbains non planifiés des franges nord et ouest de Dar es Salaam, où l'agriculture urbaine joue un rôle central dans l’économie de nombreux ménages. Contrairement aux modèles conventionnels de migration urbaine africaine, ces nouveaux districts ont été formés par une avant-garde de cadres urbains instruits qui voient en l'agriculture une stratégie de diversification économique. Malgré les disjonctions résultant de la décolonisation et de la mise en place d'un socialisme d’État dans les années 1960 et 1970, cette avant-garde périurbaine, outre le fait d’être engagée dans des activités agricoles évocatrices des régions frontalières de la Tanzanie, a également contribué à la reproduction de configurations d'inégalité socioéconomique caractéristiques d'autres types de communautés urbaines. Forts d'améliorations infrastructurelles critiques et d'un réservoir de main-d'oeuvre urbaine à même de soutenir leurs efforts, ces districts ont attiré d'autres migrants intérieurs urbains influents sur le plan économique à la suite des réformes capitalistes qui ont accompagné la mise en œuvre de la Déclaration de Zanzibar en 1991.

Type
Research Articles
Information
Africa , Volume 80 , Issue 2 , May 2010 , pp. 249 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2010

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