History of the Mount Kilimanjaro Area

Abstract

Mount Kilimanjaro is perhaps the most recognized geographic feature in sub-Saharan Africa. Rising to a height of 5,895 meters (19,340 feet), it is the tallest peak in Africa, the world’s tallest freestanding mountain, and the highest volcano outside of South America. The massif extends 95 kilometers from east to west and 65 kilometers north to south and is at least 30 kilometers away from the nearest peaks. Owing to its tremendous size, it gives rise to five distinct climate zones—temperate forest, rainforest, moorland, alpine desert, and ice cap—that emerge from the surrounding arid Maasai steppe. Its numerous rivers, arising in rainforest, provide surface water resources to the lower slopes as well as the surrounding watershed, which extends more than 300 kilometers to the Indian Ocean. Kilimanjaro is perhaps best known for its white cap, consisting of both glaciers and seasonal snowfall, that makes it unique among mountains in Africa. As an island in the middle of the steppe, Kilimanjaro has long been important in the lives of African communities. It has been most important to the Chagga-speaking peoples who have made it their permanent home. For more than five hundred years, they have developed agricultural societies on the southern and eastern slopes of the mountain, featuring intensive agriculture of bananas, yams, and other crops as well as an extensive system of surface irrigation. The mountain has also long been a spectacle for outsiders. In the mid-19th century, Europeans became enamored with the snow-capped mountain in Africa. A flood of explorers, missionaries, and mountaineers gave way to European conquest and colonization that lasted from the 1880s to the 1960s. Colonialism not only transformed life for Chagga peoples but also made Kilimanjaro into a symbol with broad-reaching importance across the continent and beyond. For more than a century, the Kilimanjaro area has been the focal point of contestation, debate, and struggle that, in many ways, makes it a microcosm of the colonial and postcolonial experiences of Africa as a whole. Colonialism introduced new political, economic, social, and religious structures, embedded in a context of coercion and violence, that not only generated debate and resistance but also opened new opportunities for some. These dynamics have remained to a large extent in the postcolonial period, as outside actors ranging from the Tanzanian government and nongovernmental organizations to the International Monetary Fund and climate scientists have attempted to control and harness the mountain’s resources, often at the expense of local interests. Yet for the Chagga, the mountain very much remains their home, and they vehemently defend their right to control its valuable resources. As the threat of climate change looms, these clashes between local and outside interests will likely become even more fervent.