People In Tanzania Research Articles

Growing up Pregnant: Events of Kinship in Everyday Life

This paper explores how pregnant girls and young mothers, between the ages of 14 and 19, manage their social relations during pregnancy and early motherhood. Whereas most of the pregnant girls and young moth­ers in this study lived as 'unwanted family members ' others were reinte­grated into their families. The paper focuses on how they actively negotiate and form 'relatedness ' to reduce uncertainty in their daily life, and particularly how they and their children struggle not to be excluded from reciprocal family responsibilities. During recent decades, people in Tanzania as in most qf sub-Saharan Africa have been experiencing major changes in the family structure. Modernisation and urbanisation, and more recently the HIVIAJDS pandemic, have also resulted in the disinte­gration of social support networb and high Level of mobility also among young adolescents and children. The research is based on field­work in Muheza, a roadside town in north-eastern Tanzania (2002-2003).

‘We Must Run While Others Walk’: popular participation and development crisis in Tanzania, 1961–9

The early independence period in Tanzania was not simply an ante-chamber to the post-Arusha Declaration period of Ujamaa. The state undertook to incorporate, for the first time, the people of Tanzania in the formal development planning structures in an attempt to marry national developmental objectives to local needs. Self-help, or ‘nation building’ as it was also known, was an attempt to bring consensus and dialogue to the planning process. The scale of self-help activity unleashed by its formal adoption as part of rural development policy caught the government by surprise, however, and raised fears over the level of control that local government in particular was able to exert over popular efforts in development. The gradual emergence of statism in Tanzania, in place by the end of the decade, was in large part the response of a panicking state, fearing an imminent crisis in its power to direct development policy, and maintain command over scarce resources.

Health services utilisation among secondary school students in Arusha region, Tanzania.

To investigate patterns and determinants of health services utilisation by secondary school students. A cross-sectional survey. Twelve secondary schools located within seven districts of Arusha region Tanzania. Three thousand six hundred and three students proportionately selected from the twelve schools according to enrolment size. Self-reported use of modern and traditional health services within the past two years. The majority (77%) of the students used only modern health services while very few (1.3%) used only traditional services. Fever was the main reason for seeking health care during the last visit. Respondents who used traditional services expressed lower level of satisfaction with the services than those who used modern services. Living situation and socio-economic status of respondent's family predicted utilisation of modern health services whereas self-rated health status and perception that poverty was a threat against one's health predicted utilisation of traditional health services. Since most of secondary school students use modern health services, improvement of the modern health system is likely to benefit this population. Further work is needed to elucidate factors that facilitate or impede use of health services by young people in Tanzania.

The social capital crash in the periphery:: An analysis of the current predicament in sub-Saharan Africa

The social capital crash in the periphery:: An analysis of the current predicament in sub-Saharan Africa

Knowledge, risk perception of AIDS and reported sexual behaviour among students in secondary schools and colleges in Tanzania.

A questionnaire survey was carried out among 1041 students in secondary schools and colleges in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania to evaluate the relationship between HIV-risky sexual behaviour and anti-condom bias, as well as with AIDS-related information, knowledge, perceptions and attitudes. Self-reportedly, 54% of students (75% of the boys and 40% of the girls) were sexually active, 39% had a regular sexual partner and 13% had multiple partners in the previous year. The condom use rate was higher than previous reports. However, 30% of sexually active respondents did not always use condoms (Risk-1 behaviour) and 35% of those with multiple partners in the previous year did not always use condoms (Risk-2 behaviour). Multiple logistic regression analyses indicated that 'sex partner hates condom' had association with both Risk-1 behaviour (OR 2.47; 95% CI 1.58-3.85) and Risk-2 behaviour (OR 2.47; 95% CI 1.10-5.48). 'Use of condom prevents HIV infection' also had association with both Risk-1 behaviour (OR 2.09; 95% CI 1.19-3.67) and Risk-2 behaviour (OR 3.73; 95% CI 1.28-11.03). Students engaging in risky behaviour were aware of the risk, even though they failed to change their behaviour. Reasons for the AIDS epidemic among Tanzanian students and the importance of more effective AIDS education are also discussed.

Cattle Raiding and Its Correlates: The Cultural-Ecological Consequences of Market-Oriented Cattle Raiding Among the Kuria of Tanzania

Among the agro-pastoralist Kuria people of Tanzania, many young men are engaged in an illicit livestock trade in which cattle stolen in Tanzania are sold to Tanzanian and Kenyan buyers for cash. In contrast to earlier theoretical formulations that have focused on pastoralist livestock raiding's presumed benign human-ecological functions of redistribution and herd management, this paper argues that Kuria cattle raiding is the driving force behind deleterious, and severe, human-ecological consequences in the study area, including a plummeting cattle population and a steady decline in food production in northern Tanzania's agriculturally bountiful Tarime District.

Tanzania: the limits to development from above

The people of Tanzania have been subjected to a development from above, often implemented by force by the colonial and post-colonial state and advocated by external donor agencies, the IMF and the ...

Building Independent Mass Media in Africa

The 1980s were a terrible time for Africa. The decade began auspiciously enough — Nigeria had returned to civilian rule, the Tanzania People's Defence Force had sent Idi Amin packing, and the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe was about to win independence. But this promising beginning was quickly transformed and Africa sunk into its ‘lost decade’.

Anthropologists and rural development: Old dilemmas in new guises?

Horowitz, Michael M. and Thomas M. Painter, eds. Anthropology and Rural Development in West Africa. Boulder: Westview Press, 1986. xv + 323 pp. including references. $19.95 paper. Arhem, Kaj. The Maasai and the State: The Impact of Rural Development Policies on a Pastoral People in Tanzania. Copenhagen: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 1985. 67 pp. including maps, photographs, and bibliography. Freeman, Donald B. and Glen B. Norcliffe. Rural Enterprise in Kenya: Development and Spatial Organization of the Nonfarm Sector. Chicago: University of Chicago Department of Geography, 1985. xiv + 100 pp. including tables, appendices, and bibliography. $10.00 paper.

Organizational Development in Tanzania

Tanzania is beautiful but, unfortunately, Tanzania's beauty is not matched by the prosperity of its people. This article is about the people of Tanzania and their struggle to keep pace with the world around them. In particular, it is the story of the people of one organization, The Tanzanian Rural Development Bank, (TRDB), and their efforts to better address Tanzania's rural development needs by soliciting the aid of American management consulting and training.

タンザニアの栄養とそれに影響を及ぼす諸要因の考察

It is unfortunately true that many people in Tanzania are still suffering from malnutrition despite of the vast expenditure of time, money and effort in attempts to improve the nutritional status. Today, to eradicate malnutrition is, therefore, recognized as one of major aims to be urgently achieved in the national development plan in Tanzania. Thus it could be worthwhile to review the nutritional status and its influential factors in Tanzania in order to understand the entire problem correctly.Various clinical and dietary survey data clearly show that the nutritional status of Tanzanian people is generally considerably low as compared to that of those in developed countries and that the incidence of various types of malnutrition is high in the country. Among different nutritional disorders existing in Tanzania, Protein-Calorie Malnutrition (PCM) appears to be the most important disorder because of its wide distribution, its vulnerable group which is mainly children who are the future capital, and its complexity of causation.Influential factors on nutrition discussed in this paper are summerized as follows.From the demographic point of view, as commonly seen in developing countries, the rapid increase of population is a considerable problem especially in relation to the demand and supply of food. High dependency ratio in the population undoubtedly affects the nutritional status particularly of children under five years and, pregnant and lactating women owing to their low social status.With regard to dietary factors, it is noticed that Tanzanian diet is not necessarily less nutritive but insufficient in amount. It is, therefore, thought that the nutritional status could be substantially improved by simply increasing the daily food intake of individuals. The dietary improvement not only in quantity but also in quality, is, however, certainly desirable to improve the nutritional status particularly for those whose staple foods are banana and starchy roots.In connection with the population increase, the per capita food production of Tanzania tends to decline in recent years despite of the increase of gross food production. Taking this fact and population increase into consideration, it is obvious that paying more effort to increase the yield per unit area under cultivation of food crops is inevitable in the long run. In addition to raising the food production, the proper conservation of food currently produced is considered to be of great help to increase the amount of food available resulting better nutritional status. Concerning the food production, it should be added that the land tenure system of Tanzania which enable people to obtain farming land readily is acting an important role to increase the food availability of individuals.From the socio-economical point of view, though there is not a remarkable gap between the rich and the poor, the presence of unequal intra-family distribution of income tends to create the malnourishment of dependent group in a family. It is also noticed that with economic development people do not always improve their nutrition. Food habit based on long established cultural patterns is often limiting the food availability of a certain group of the population in Tanzania. As a matter of fact, that socio-economic factors, particularly poverty and ignorance as primary causes of malnutrition, underlie most other causal factors makes the improvement of nutritional status difficult.In view of environmental factors, it is observed that inadequate water supply in quality and quantity is highly related to lowering the nutritional status. The availability of water in Tanzania is actually one of the most important factors to limit agricultural production as well as human life. It is noticed that as a result of “villagisation”, the social environment in rural area has been considerably improved particularly in terms of the access to medical and educational facilities. The

Life-Styles and Nature Conservation

One of the key papers at the Technical Meetings that accompanied the IUCN General Assembly in Zaïre was Dr Dasmann's showing how the emphasis in nature conservation has shifted. No longer can the ‘biosphere people’ – the people of the developed nations who draw on the resources of the whole world to maintain their life-style – simply urge developing countries to ‘protect’ wildlife and establish national parks while at the same time pressing them to cut back their population growth. One extra person in the USA will consume more in energy and materials than 20 extra people in Tanzania. What Dr Dasmann calls the ‘ecosystem people’—those who depend for all their resources on supplies within their local ecosystem – lived in balance with nature and, moreover, did not live impoverished lives, Today we can only solve our world problems by getting back to some better balance, ‘the old partnership with nature that existed without people being aware of it’. What we need, he suggests, is ‘conservation as if people mattered’ and ‘development as if nature mattered’. Nature conservation today demands new life-styles.