Consuming Development in Coastal Tanzania: Space, Commodification, and the Indian Ocean Littoral in Mikindani

The southern coastal zone of Tanzania has suffered under the perception that it is a marginalized region within the larger state. Under British colonial rule, the twain problems of agricultural shortages and limited economic integration into larger, more efficient trade systems led colonial officials to conclude that the Southern Province needed direct material and technological intervention to overcome these deficiencies. The shape of that redress was the ill-conceived Groundnut Scheme, wherein unused land was to become the new agricultural “bread basket” in the years following World War II. The British colonial administration, in a coordinated project with several corporations, aimed to transform sisal land into a modern port city to process and distribute the groundnuts. Dual processes of agricultural and urban development were to occur through the Groundnut Scheme. This paper asks how development affected the southeastern coastal town of Mikindani? How did the region’s integration into capitalist markets and societies alter the community? Can a conceptual and material excavation of Tanzania’s southern-most coastal zone help us to understand processes of social and material change?
     My focus on spatial factors integrates Tanzania in larger spheres of influence. It shows how colonial development agendas contradicted the carrying capacity for the people and the landscapes the British aimed to improve. This paper questions the legitimacy of colonial views that the southern region was an economic backwater. Rather, the cosmopolitan links between coastal merchants, Swahili ports and the Indian Ocean network need further excavation.  My work raises important questions about spatial dilemmas and forms, to question how ports functioned as signifiers of cultural, material, and intellectual exchange?