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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:'Almost an Oxfam in Itself': Oxfam, Ujamaa and Development in Tanzania
Author:Jennings, MichaelISNI
Year:2002
Periodical:African Affairs: The Journal of the Royal African Society
Volume:101
Issue:405
Period:October
Pages:509-530
Language:English
Geographic term:Tanzania
Subjects:NGO
development
villagization
Development and Technology
international relations
Politics and Government
Economics and Trade
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/3518465
Abstract:This article examines how Oxfam came to forge an exceptionally close relationship with the Tanzanian State during the 1960s and 1970s. Oxfam, an organization that sought in this period to build and strengthen grassroots participation in development planning and implementation, participated in a development programme in Tanzania that, during the 1970s, actually withdrew power from the peasantry. The government shifted ever more towards an authoritarian position, and forced the relocation of upwards of six million people into newly established villages. Yet Oxfam seemingly was blind to the realities of what was going on, maintaining throughout this period that the development programme was oriented towards the creation of communal production and grassroots democracy Oxfam's definition of Ujamaa. The article argues that Oxfam came to this position through its involvement in a rural development project in southern Tanzania in the 1960s. The Ruvuma Development Association became, for Oxfam, its touchstone for interpreting and defining what Ujamaa meant. Having erected a prism through which to understand Tanzanian development, Oxfam failed to perceive the growing divergence between the State and itself in objectives and strategy in the implementation of a rural development strategy. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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