https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0085-4896
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ABSTRACT
This article interrogates place, process and people’s quest for enhanced welfare during the 2002–2012 global mineral price boom in northwest Tanzania. Mass in-migration of miners, traders and service providers generated diversified residential settlements. Processes of occupational change and urbanization, catalyzed by acquisition of employment, land, housing and other possessions at six contrasting mining locations were compared from a geo-social perspective. Our surveyed gold and diamond mining sites represented different manifestations of the mining trajectory namely: (1) artisanal rushes, (2) mature artisanal and (3) industrial mining. The article investigates who benefitted locationally and who lost in residents’ scrambles to gain improved living standards. Survey data on 216 household heads’ occupations, educational backgrounds, consumption and investments were collected, followed by construction of a household welfare index, revealing modest welfare improvements relative to rural consumption norms for the majority of interviewed resident households. However, in line with Picketty’s theoretical insights, extreme material inequality surfaced on the welfare spectrum between the outlier affluent and poor quintile groups. Those with higher educational attainment enjoyed superior welfare and occupational status, coalescing towards middle class formation. At the opposite end, single female-headed households stood out as extremely disadvantaged, handicapped by high child dependency ratios and occupational immobility.
Acknowledgements
We thank these institutions and all the residents of mining sites, notably miners, service providers, and traders, and key informants for their willingness to participate in this study.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Hilson, “Small-scale mining,” Grätz “Morality, risk and rules in West African artisanal gold mining,” Tschakert, “Artisanal mining,” Maconachie and Hilson, “Recognizing and nurturing artisanal mining,” Hirons, “Shifting sand,” Geenen, African Artisanal Mining.
2 Bryceson and Jønsson, “Gold digging careers.”
3 Goodman, Gold Seeking, Gray, Gold Diggers.
4 Bryceson et al. “Mining mobility.”
5 Picketty, Capital and Ideology.
6 Werthmann, “Following the Hills,” 112–113)
7 Ibid., 129.
8 Walsh, “Hot money,” “After the Rush,” Büscher “Urbanisation.”
9 Rodrigues, Büscher and Cuvulier, “Boomtown urbanization.”
10 Mususa, Life on the Copperbelt.
11 Kamete, “Mining and urbanization in Zimbabwe.”
12 Marais, “Mining towns.”
13 Werthmann, “Gold rush in West Africa” and Walsh, “Hot Money.”
14 Abu-Lughod, “Challenge of comparative case studies.”
15 Durkheim first published his book The Division of Labour in Society in 1893.
16 Polanyi, The Great Transformation.
17 Piketty, in Capital and Ideology, stresses the efficacy of progressive taxation regimes, housing, education, health food, and basic income subsidies to help the poor.
18 Bryceson, “Artisanal gold rush mining and frontier democracy.”
19 Nyerere, an ardent opponent of South Africa’s apartheid policy, avoided the possible politically destabilizing influence of South African investment in Tanzanian mineral production.
20 The International Labour Office (ILO), “Social and labour issues in small-scale mines” estimated the number of artisanal miners in Tanzania totaled between 450,000 to 600,000. Gold miners constituted approximately two-thirds of that total.
21 Bryceson and Jønsson, “Gold digging careers.”
22 Jønsson and Bryceson, “Rushing for gold.”
23 Mwaipopo, “Ubeshi.”
24 Bryceson, Jønsson and Shand, “Mining mobility.”
25 R2 measured .2152.
26 The number of years that they actually attended primary school varied between 1 and 7 years, most leaving after four years.
27 Cooksey, “Tanzanian Secondary Education.”
28 Bryceson, Jønsson and Verbrugge, “For richer, for poorer.”
29 Ibid.
30 Bryceson et al., “Mineralized urbanization in Africa.”
31 Simmel, “The metropolis and mental life.”
32 James, The Middle Class.
33 Green, “Making Africa Middle Class.”
34 James, The Middle Class.
35 Piketty, Capital and Ideology.
36 ILO, Global Employment Trends.
37 Kharas, “The emerging middle class.”
38 Lentz, “African middle classes.”
39 Melber et al., The Rise of Africa’s Middle Class.
40 World Bank, https://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/what-does-tanzanias-move-lower-middle-income-status-mean.
41 Moyo et al., “Attaining middle income status.”
42 In 1980, Tanzania had one of the smallest secondary school systems in the world relative to the size of its population. As of 1997, less than 6% of Tanzania’s school-age children were in school, see https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators (accessed 14 March, 2021).
43 In December 2021, the World Bank approved a $500 million ‘BOOST Primary Student Learning Program for Results’ aid program, for 12.3 million students, but no provision for secondary schooling. Many private secondary schools have opened in the last two decades, which are unaffordable for poor families. See https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2021/12/17/tanzania-more-than-12-million-children-to-benefit-from-improved-preprimary-and-primary-education. (accessed 6 June, 2022).
44 Phillips et al., “Tanzania’s precious minerals boom.”
45 Pedersen et al., “Mineral exhaustion.”
46 Bryceson, et al., “Mining mobility.”
47 Radley, tracing class formation amongst artisanal Congolese miners in neighbouring Kivu in Eastern DRC, documents the existence of a local ethnic mining elite, which invested heavily in their children’s education with aspirations for them to be university-educated (Radley, “Class Formation.”) Dumett observed similar class differentiation to the extent of emergence of an African entrepreneurial and educated middle class in Ghana during the country’s late 19th century gold boom (Dumett, El Dorado in West Africa).