From Modernization to Villagization: The World Bank and Ujamaa

Abstract

On February 5, 1967, the leadership of the young nation of Tanzania made a bold statement that it was prepared to chart a new course towards development and modernity. The Arusha Declaration, delivered by President Julius Nyerere to the Executive Council of the Tanzanian African Nation Union (TANU), was intended to be a powerful articulation of aims and principles for the nation of Tanzania and its people. The Declaration opened with the simple statement that “the policy of TANU is to build a socialist state,” before laying out the principles behind Tanzanian socialism and TANU party membership.1 To accomplish this core mission of building socialism in Tanzania, Nyerere and the TANU instructed the nation, “Let us pay heed to the peasant,” arguing that equitable development, free of exploitation, could only be achieved if the nation focused on its small farmers in the countryside.2 From this new attention to the peasants, Nyerere would formulate a development plan based around a concept known as ujamaa, a Swahili word that can be translated as “family-hood.” In practical terms, ujamaa would take the form of collective villages in which rural peasants would voluntarily come together to form a communal farm. These new villages would be organized along the lines of a socialism that Nyerere claimed to be deeply rooted in African history and tradition.3