Publication: Off to sugar valley

Despite colonial echoes, settlement schemes represent a major element in ‘nation-building’ endeavours in Tanzania’s history. Their evolution through the 1960s was circuitous and haphazard. This article explores the origins of one of the earliest schemes linked to Julius Nyerere and TANU: the Kilombero Settlement Scheme (KSS). It traces its origins from 1959 and ragged progress over the subsequent decade before its eventual transmutation under Ujamaa. Nyerere personally promoted KSS and its basic premise in sending unemployed men from cities to uncleared countryside to grow sugar cane for sale to a local factory. The scheme’s extended trajectory reveals its palimpsestic nature through a history layered by different approaches to the reorganisation of rural life in Tanzania. This was an embryonic testing ground, both in terms of the politics of resettlement and of funding development projects of this kind. For one of the surviving settlers, they were ‘Nyerere’s People’ as ideologies met practical realities. KSS was flawed but resilient. For its failures more than its successes, it became an important model in Tanzania’s programme of social development for understanding the challenges of rural transformation.

Jackson, JM 2021, Off to Sugar Valley: The Kilombero Settlement Scheme and Nyerere’s People, 1959-69’ . Journal of Eastern African StudiesDOI

More CRC News

poster for a public lecture

CRC-TRR Public Lecture: Franklin Obeng-Odoom

Mon | June 2nd, 2025 | 16:00 – 17:30  (CEST) Property and Power Prof. Dr. Franklin Obeng-Odoom (University of Helsinki) The world is becoming less ...
Read More »

Thomas Widlok Awarded Leo Spitzer Prize for Academic Excellence

The University of Cologne recently awarded research prized to excellent researchers from the natural and life sciences, the humanities, economics and social sciences. Thomas Widlok (Project ...
Read More »
poster for an event at the gssc on 20 may 2025

GSSC Seminar Series: Is the Africa Charter a Helpful Tool in Creating a More Inclusive and Transformative Global Science Culture?

May 20th, 2025 | 12:00 – 13:00 (CEST). Seminarraum 3.03 Global South Studies Center (GSSC), Classen-Kappelmann-Straße 24, 50931 Köln GSSC Seminar Series 20 May 2025 ...
Read More »
cover for a web post

Be a Student Reporter at Tropentag 2025

September 10th – 12th, 2025 | Hybrid Event The annual interdisciplinary conference on research in tropical and subtropical agriculture, natural resource management and rural development ...
Read More »
black and white picture of a hand holding a gun

Global Histories of Violence (c.1800-2025) Conference at the University of Warwick

May 29th – 30th, 2025 | University of Warwick This upcoming conference at the University of Warwick explores global histories of violence, with a focus ...
Read More »
Scroll to Top