Of Water Systems and Grain Mills: Observations of Felt Needs in Western Tanzania

Abstract

I would like to share an anomaly I observed in Kigoma Region of Tanzania. It is an anomaly because of its incompatibility with many of the decision-making models implicitly used to assess development aid programs. Such models are, of course, based primarily on the assumptions and observations made by economists, sociologists and anthropologists about the already developed countries. Implicitly, they assume a certain type of rationality which is taken for granted by both expatriate planners, and local planners trained in Western tradition. However, as I think that this example demonstrates, rational behavior in rural Third World communities may be predicated on assumptions outside the unspoken parameters of the social sciences.