The changing nature of the Peri-Urban Zone in Africa: evidence from Dar-es-Salaam,Tanzania

Abstract

Research on the peri-urban zones of African cities since the mid-1980s has focused around three main themes, these being peri-urban agriculture as a survival strategy, debates about the relative efficiencies of peri-urban agriculture, and the question of production priorities. Drawing on recent evidence from Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania, this paper suggest that a combination of structural adjustment measures and the eased economic crisis in Tanzania has changed conditions, the result of which has been the increasing commodification of land in the peri-urban zone during the 1990s. This has turned the per-urban zone more into a zone of investment and economic opportunity, rather than a zone of survival, with the result that the poorer urban groups are being increasingly excluded. A further complication concerns confusion arising out of current Tanzanian land law, and particularly the tensions between customary and statutory law.