Compiled by Hugh Wenban-Smith
This is a second summary report of development research in Tanzania, culled from journals in the library of the London School of Economics. It covers the period January to June 2011. The format is: Journal title; Volume and issue number; Author(s); Article title; Short abstract (in square brackets – shortened version of published abstract).
African Affairs, Vol 110(439) – Lange, S “Gold and governance: Legal injustices and lost opportunities in Tanzania”. [A number of African countries have opened up opportunities for large-scale mining by foreign investors over the last decade and a half. Tanzania, one of the new mining countries, is now among the largest gold producers in Africa, but investor-friendly contracts have resulted in extremely low government revenues from mining, totaling less than 5% of what the country receives in development aid. In response to widespread discontent, the Government amended the 1998 Mining Act in 2010. However improved legal provisions may have limited effect if the present governance challenges are not resolved.]
African Studies Review, Vol 54(1) – Weinstein, L “The politics of government expenditures in Tanzania, 1999-2007”. [What allocation strategy do hegemonic party regimes pursue in order to increase their level of electoral support …? This article examines the patterns by which expenditures were distributed by the Tanzanian ruling party, CCM, across the country’s 114 mainland districts from 1999 through 2007. Overall the study finds that CCM targeted expenditures towards those districts that elected the party with the highest margin of victory.]
African Studies Review, Vol 54(1) – Hillbom, E “Farm intensification and milk market expansion in Meru, Tanzania”. [In Meru, Tanzania, technological and institutional change has turned milk into one of the most reliable and important sources of income for smallholder households. Decades of increased population density have caused land scarcity, leading smallholders to intensify their farming methods and land use, including introducing stall-fed exotic breeds of dairy cows. Meanwhile a growing urban and rural demand has resulted in significant market expansion for milk and increasing cash incomes for smallholders … These factors make the livestock sector in Meru an interesting example of broad-based agricultural development.]
Development Policy Review, Vol 29(1) Supp – Cooksey, B “Marketing reform? The rise and fall of agricultural liberalization in Tanzania”. [This article argues that the liberalization of Tanzanian export agriculture from the early 1990s to the present has failed to take place to the extent claimed by the Tanzanian Government and donor agencies. While internal food markets have largely been liberalized (e.g. maize), donor-inspired attempts to liberalise export crop markets (e.g. coffee, tobacco) have been seriously undermined by the political-bureaucratic class. As in other countries undergoing adjustment under World Bank/IMF programs, a combination of local vested interests and concern with the ‘rigged rules and double standards’ of global commodity markets has led to a systematic but under-reported backlash against liberalization.]
Journal of Development Economics, Vol 94(2) – Cull, R & Spreng, C P “Pursuing efficiency while maintaining outreach: Bank privatization in Tanzania”. [Profitability improvements after the privatization of a large state-owned bank might come at the expense of reduced access to financial services for some groups, especially the rural poor. The privatization of Tanzania’s National Bank of Commerce provides a unique episode for studying this issue. The bank was split into the ‘new’ National Bank of Commerce, a commercial bank that assumed most of the original bank’s assets and liabilities, and the National Microfinance Bank, which assumed most of the branch network and the mandate to foster access to financial services. The new NBC’s profitability and portfolio quality improved although credit growth was slow … Finding a buyer for the Microfinance Bank proved very difficult, although after years under contract management … Rabobank of the Netherlands emerged as a purchaser. Profitability has since improved and lending has slowly grown, while the share of non-performing loans remains low.]
Journal of Development Studies, Vol 47(2) – van den Broeck, K & Dercon, S “Information flows and social externalities in a Tanzanian banana growing village”. [This article analyses the role of social networks as facilitators of information flows and banana output increase. Based on a village census, full information is available on the socio-economic characteristics and banana production of farmers’ kinship group members, neighbours and informal insurance group members … For the survey village of Nyakatoke in Tanzania the results suggest that information flows exist within all types of groups analysed but output externalities are limited to kinship groups.]
Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol 49(02) – Makulilo, A B “Watching the watcher: An evaluation of local election observers in Tanzania”. [This article evaluates three reports by the leading election observer in Tanzania, the Tanzania Election Monitoring Committee (TEMCO) for the 1995, 2000 and 2005 general elections. It notes that despite the prevalence of the same factors that TEMCO considered as irregularities in the 1995 and 2000 general elections when it certified those elections as “free but not fair”, it issued a “clean, free and fair” verdict on the 2005 general election. This conclusion, at variance with the data, reveals problems in assuring observer neutrality.]