Dar es Salaam as a 'Harbour of Peace' in East Africa: Tracing the Role of Creolized Urban Ethnicity in Nation-State Formation

Dar es Salaam is exceptional in East Africa for having a record of relatively little ethnic tension, and remaining tranquil and true to its name, the ‘harbour of peace’. This paper explores the interface between ethnic and national identities in Tanzania’s capital city, focusing on its ethnic foundations and their malleability with regard to nationalism, asking how nationalist identities were negotiated vis-à-vis existing local ethnic identities. How willing were ethnic groups that were indigenous to the locality to ‘share’ the city, its land, and amenities with newcomer compatriots, given that the city was almost as new as the nation-state? How did their modus operandi affect nation-building?nation-state, Tanzania, nationalism, urbanization

Mining mobility and settlement during an East African gold boom: seeking fortune and accommodating fate

In light of Shiller’s concept of ‘irrational exuberance’, we interrogate migrants’ optimistic material expectations at artisanal and industrial gold mining locations during a period of exceptional mobility spurred by the international gold boom of 2000–2013. Our household survey and interview findings reveal miners’ and residents’ mobility and settlement patterns in three Tanzanian gold mining settlements, representing different stages and forms of mining along a trajectory of deepening gold extraction and increasing urbanization. Resident miners’, traders’ and service providers’ personal motivations, strategies and dilemmas surface. The constancy of migrants’ motivation for economic betterment and the contingency of their strategic thinking in the face of gold supply uncertainty emerges clearly. However, mining site residents’ highly mobile lives entail toleration of temporary, inadequate housing in infrastructurally deficient, polluted and unsafe mining environments, a situation at odds with their aims for lifestyle enhancement. Given the unpredictability of gold production, residents reconcile their expectations of striking it rich with the reality of sub-optimal outcomes. Those who gain satisfaction and esteem in their careers are likely to do so through high levels of mobility, ultimately rewarded with desirable housing and settlement locations, whereas others adapt to constrained mobility and unenviable settlement locations, or abandon mining

Prostitution or partnership? Wifestyles in Tanzanian artisanal gold-mining settlements

Tanzania, along with several other African countries, is experiencing a national mining boom, which has prompted hundreds of thousands of men and women to migrate to mineral-rich locations. At these sites, relationships between the sexes defy the sexual norms of the surrounding countryside to embrace new relational amalgams of polygamy, monogamy and promiscuity. This article challenges the assumption that female prostitution is widespread. Using interview data with women migrants, we delineate six ‘wifestyles’, namely sexual-cum-conjugal relationships between men and women that vary in their degree of sexual and material commitment. In contrast to bridewealth payments, which involved elders formalising marriages through negotiations over reproductive access to women, sexual negotiations and relations in mining settlements involve men and women making liaisons and co-habitation arrangements directly between each other without third-party intervention. Economic interdependence may evolve thereafter with the possibility of women, as well as men, offering material support to their sex partners

Mining habitat, house and home during an East African gold boom: economic and emotional dimensions

This article interrogates migrants’ economic and emotionally entwined decision-making regarding migration and settlement in unfolding stages of a gold mining boom. Three Tanzanian gold mining settlements representing temporal, spatial and scalar differences along the gold mining trajectory are contrasted: an artisanal rush site, a mature artisanal mining settlement and Geita town, site of a large industrial gold mine. Our data derives from in-depth interviews with miners, traders, service providers and farmers supplemented by a household survey. Interviewees’ verbatim narratives describing their work and family life are laced with feelings of both anticipation and apprehension. Strategic calculations and contingency thinking combine with emotional anxiety as they pursue efforts to ‘get ahead’ during the mining boom. Amidst the uncertainty of stressful work lives, and obstacles to secure housing and residence in infrastructurally deficient, unsafe and polluted mining environments, a ‘deferred sense of home’ surfaces in many mining settlement residents’ narratives. Seeking a ‘comfortable and secure home eventually’ is a coping mechanism for bridging the gap between initial high expectations and their current material reality

Wealth and poverty in mining Africa: migration, settlement and occupational change in Tanzania during the global mineral boom, 2002–2012

This article interrogates place, process and people’s quest for enhanced welfare during the 2002–2012 global mineral price boom in northwest Tanzania. Mass in-migration of miners, traders and service providers generated diversified residential settlements. Processes of occupational change and urbanization, catalyzed by acquisition of employment, land, housing and other possessions at six contrasting mining locations were compared from a geo-social perspective. Our surveyed gold and diamond mining sites represented different manifestations of the mining trajectory namely: (1) artisanal rushes, (2) mature artisanal and (3) industrial mining. The article investigates who benefitted locationally and who lost in residents’ scrambles to gain improved living standards. Survey data on 216 household heads’ occupations, educational backgrounds, consumption and investments were collected, followed by construction of a household welfare index, revealing modest welfare improvements relative to rural consumption norms for the majority of interviewed resident households. However, in line with Picketty’s theoretical insights, extreme material inequality surfaced on the welfare spectrum between the outlier affluent and poor quintile groups. Those with higher educational attainment enjoyed superior welfare and occupational status, coalescing towards middle class formation. At the opposite end, single female-headed households stood out as extremely disadvantaged, handicapped by high child dependency ratios and occupational immobility

Mining in Africa after the supercycle: New directions and geographies

From Wiley via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: received 2019-12-20, rev-recd 2021-01-19, accepted 2021-03-16, pub-electronic 2021-05-24Article version: VoRPublication status: PublishedFunder: British Academy; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000286; Grant(s): pf130031Funder: Department for International Development; Grant(s): PO 5113Funder: University of Edinburgh, School of Social and Political Science’s Strategy fundFunder: University of Manchester, School of Environment, Education and Development SMining in Africa is at a pivotal moment. For most of the period 2000 to 2012, the extractive industries were in a “supercycle” of sustained high commodity prices. Driven by resource‐intensive growth in emerging market economies, these high commodity prices were anticipated to continue for decades to come. However, this “supercycle” ended in 2012 and there followed a severe slump in mineral prices from 2014 onwards. On the one hand, a new era of commodity market dynamics has begun, with changing patterns of economic activity, minerals governance, and environmental regulation. On the other hand, the end of the supercycle has continued or intensified pre‐existing trends towards mechanisation, automation, and enclavity, while distributive pressures on companies by local communities and host nations increase. We argue that the end of the supercycle has reconfigured the geographies of extraction in ways that are not yet reflected in existing research or taken into consideration in policy implementation, particularly around corporate strategy, state–business relations, and models for mineral‐based development strategies. In this paper we map the terrain of research on the supercycle in Africa and identify emerging post‐supercycle trends – some of which have overtaken research. The paper is structured around examining four themes: (1) new geographies of investment and extraction; (2) new geographies of struggle; (3) national minerals‐based development; and (4) labour and livelihoods, for which we identify key trends during the supercycle and post‐supercycle and areas for future research and policy development

Urban growth and poverty in mining africa

After several decades of economic decline, mining's growing importance in many African economies has been welcomed, but the rate of sectoral transformation from rural agrarian to more urbanised mining economies, has not afforded sufficient time for policymakers to fully appreciate the nature of the developmental processes underway. This study focuses on the economic, social and cultural change associated with rapid and/or erratic rates of urban growth propelled by mining expansion in three contrasting countries: Angola (diamonds) Ghana (gold) Tanzania (gold/diamonds) As a prelude to field studies, an international conference will be held to overview the impact of mining on urbanisation in Africa's major emergent mining economies. Phase 2 encompasses key informant interviews, focus group discussions and surveys in small and large-scale mining settlements to probe miners' migration, earnings, work and living conditions. Phase 3 involves interviews with national policymakers about their perceptions of mining's influence on urbanization and poverty. Phase 4 concentrates on dissemination of research findings. A 'Digging Deeper' participatory programme involving youth groups expressing their perceptions of life in mining settlements in various art forms explores the local population's consciousness of their cultural and social identity transformation. The overall aim is to disseminate knowledge of actual as opposed to rumoured outcomes of mining livelihoods to facilitate the formulation of policies tailored to current realities