Education has always had a very special role in the social and political history of Tanzania. After independence President Nyerere and his government set out to educate the mass of the population through the intensive programme of 'Education for Self-Reliance'. It was a key example of the efforts to use education as a weapon of social engineering. This book puts that programme in the context of the history of education during the British Mandate from 1919 until independence in 1961. There were some aspects of continuity before and after independence. Lene Buchert's analysis focuses on the...

John Lonsdale says in his introduction:
This is the oral evidence of the Kikuyu villagers with whom Greet Kershaw lived as an aid worker during the Mau Mau Emergency in the 1950s, and which is now totally irrecoverable in any form save in her own field notes.
Professor Kershaw has uncovered long local histories of social tension which could have been revealed by no other means than patient enquiry, of both her neighbour s memory and government archives
Nobody, whether Kikuyu participant, Kenyan or European scholar, has provided such startlingly authoritative ethnographic...

What do ordinary women in an African city do in the face of serious enough infections in themselves and signs of acute illness in their young children? How do they manage? What does it take to get by? How do they maintain the wellbeing of the household in a setting without what would be considered as basic health provision in an American or European city?
Professor Wallman focuses on women in a densely-populated part of Kampala called Kamwokya. With the help of a team of Ugandans and non-Ugandans, a vivid picture emerges, enhanced by color photographs, sketches and maps.
Women are...

Uganda's recovery since Museveni came to power in 1986 has been one of the heartening achievements in a continent where the media have given intense coverage to disasters. This book assesses the question of whether the reality lives up to the image that has so impressed the supporters of its recovery. What has actually happened? How successful have the reforms been thus far? What are the prospects for Uganda's future?
Essays by the top scholars in the Weld span the breadth of the issue, from Uganda's growth out of poverty to development at the grass roots level. Developing Uganda replaces...

Age systems are involved in the competition for power. They are part of an institutional complex that makes societies fit to wage war. This book argues that in postcolonial North East Africa, with its recent history of national political conflict and civil and regional wars, the time has come to reemphasize the military and political relevance of age systems. Herein is new information about age systems in North East Africa, setting them firmly in a wider spatial and temporal context. Topics examined are regional age systems, the decline of some systems and the persistence of others, the way...

Eastern African pastoralists often present themselves as being egalitarian, equating cattle ownership with wealth. By this definition "the poor are not us," poverty is confined to non-pastoralist, socially excluded persons and groups.

Exploring this notion means discovering something about self-perceptions and community consciousness, how pastoralist identity has been made in opposition to other modes of production, how pastoralists want others to see them and how they see themselves.

This collection rejects the premise of pastoral egalitarianism and poses questions about the gradual...

Eastern African pastoralists often present themselves as being egalitarian, equating cattle ownership with wealth. By this definition "the poor are not us," poverty is confined to non-pastoralist, socially excluded persons and groups. Exploring this notion means discovering something about self-perceptions and community consciousness, how pastoralist identity has been made in opposition to other modes of production, how pastoralists want others to see them and how they see themselves. This collection rejects the premise of pastoral egalitarianism and poses questions about the gradual creep of...

This book looks at the microfoundations of poverty in the developing world and in particular those present in property rights. The local institutions that govern land access are fundamental in affecting the distribution of wealth in a society. Property rights matter because they affect political development and economic growth. Development economists and policy makers often work on the assumption that property rights evolve from collective to more specified systems. The author has set out to test this theory by using the evidence available in the special cases of Ethiopia and Eritrea....

Studies of the 1974 Ethiopian revolution have hitherto almost completely ignored religion, in spite of the commitment of a great majority of Ethiopian people to one or another religious tradition. Moreover, existing studies focus almost exclusively on the center, on national politics, and on the evolution of national institutions.
This book makes an important contribution to the literature on the Ethiopian revolution and on African church growth and development.
Based on the wealth of materials available from informants, in documentary collections, and in missionary records, in...

The dominant trend in pastoralist studies has long assumed that pastoralism and pastoral gender relations are inherently patriarchal. The contributors to this collection, in contrast, use diverse analytic approaches to demonstrate that pastoralist gender relations are dynamic, relational, historical, and produced through complex local-translocal interactions. Combining theoretically sophisticated analysis with detailed case studies, this collection will appeal to those doing research and teaching in African studies, gender studies, anthropology, and history. Among the topics discussed are...