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Abstract
Sub-Saharan Africa's social science literature has primarily focused on phenomena within the rural village context. Urban analysis is currently gaining momentum with concentration on the continent's capital cities, and in particular the mega cities of Lagos, Kinshasa and Johannesburg. Urban settlements of more modest size and political importance have received scant attention. This article explores the urban growth dynamics of Katoro, a rapidly expanding small town in Tanzania's northwest mining frontier. Tracing Katoro's early origins and its growth as a regional trading centre with respect to design, natural resource utilization and service development, it is argued that the transition from rural to urban settlement is far from accidental. The practical concerns and cosmopolitan vision of the settlement's leading early settlers set Katoro on a trajectory of demographic expansion and economic growth through successive stages of Tanzanian socialist and neo-liberalist policies. Responding to the opportunities afforded by regional gold mining and international border trade, longstanding residents and recent migrants created a thriving centre for the provision of trade and services that had “boom” characteristics distinct from gold strike settlements in the surrounding area. Katoro's success must be seen in scalar terms, and raises issues about analytical biases in African urban studies. Current literature dramatizing the unpredictability and chaos of urban life in Africa's mega cities has taken centre stage, leaving the dynamics of smaller urban settlements, foundational to the future of urban Africa largely ignored. This article seeks to address the literature's scalar imbalance and draw attention to the meso level between individual livelihood activities and macro economic urban performance.
Notes
1. Rakodi, Settler-Colonial City; Enwezor, Under Siege; Beall, Crankshaw and Parnell, Uniting a Divided City; Trefon, Reinventing Order; de Boeck and Plissart, Kinshasa; Beavon, Johannesburg; Bryceson and Potts, African Urban Economies.
2. Tanzania, Population Census 2002.
3. Jønsson and Bryceson, Rushing for Gold.
4. Potts, “Urban Growth and Urban Economies”; Potts, Circular Migration.
5. Data is derived from the Tanzania Frontier Survey, which randomly sampled 72 households stratified by urban location in both Katoro and Nyarugusu. The study was a collaborative effort between the author, the late Professor N.F. Madulu of the Institute of Resource Assessment at the University of Dar es Salaam and Dr. Rose Mwaipopo of the Sociology department at the University of Dar es Salaam. The project formed part of the Rural-Urban Dynamics research programme at the University of Copenhagen's Institute of Geography, funded by DANIDA. See Bryceson and Mwaipopo, “Rural-Urban Transitions.”
6. Interview with Mzee Salvatore Kalema, April 2005.
7. Those interviewed were Salvatore Kalema (80 years), Nyanatusi Bwibonenlau (56), Alex Biarugaba (64), and Zubeid Mahuba (69).
8. Interview, April 2005.
9. People emigrated from the surrounding countryside and further afield, including Tutsi from outside Tanzania.
10. Interview with Mzee Salvatore Kalema, April 2005.
11. Interview with village elders, April 24, 2005.
12. Tanzania, 1978 Population; Tanzania, 1988 Population Census; Tanzania, Population Census 2002.
13. Bryceson and Mwaipopo, “Rural-Urban Transitions.”
14. Southall, Small Urban Centres; Satterthwaite and Hardoy, Small and Intermediate Urban Centres; Baker, Small Town Africa; Baker, Francophone Africa; Baker and Pedersen, Rural-Urban Interface; J. Andersson, “Buhera Workers.”
15. Caldwell, Ghana's Towns; A. Andersson, Bright Lights.
16. United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, Secondary Cities; Sall, International Migration.
17. Howe and Bryceson, Poverty and Urban Transport.
18. Pedersen, Small African Towns.
19. de Boeck et al., “Recentering the City.”
20. Rodinelli, Diffusing Urbanization; Rodinelli, “Towns and Small Cities”; Rodinelli, “Dynamics of Growth.”
21. During the late medieval period before the Black Death, European levels of urbanization were comparable to those of present day Tanzania (26%), e.g., 20% in Britain and 40% in the Lowlands in 1300. See United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, Addressing Urban Challenges; Masschaele, Peasants, Merchants, and Markets, 82. Hilton mentions various characteristics of market towns notably: critical population size for catalyzing trade, population mostly engaged in non-agricultural occupations but commonly evidencing household livelihood diversification rather than specialization, trader as go-between in trade between local farmers and non-agricultural producers, importance of tax to trader profitability, evidence of attitudes of individualism, and external criticism of amorality. See Hilton, “Medieval Market Towns.”
22. Horton and Middleton, Swahili; Bryceson “Swahili Creolization.”
23. See Noordegraaf, Nederlandse Marktsteden for documentation of the defenses of pre-industrial Dutch market towns.
24. Jacobs, Economy of Cities; Jacobs, Wealth of Nations.
25. Bryceson, “Sources of Sustainability.”
26. Acs, Growth of Cities.
27. Bayart et al., Criminalization of the State; Chabal and Daloze, Africa Works; Chabal and Daloze, Culture Troubles.
28. Bryceson “Criminals and Clients.”
29. See Wilson, “Detribalization” and Mitchell, “Urbanization, Detribalization, and Stabilization” for critiques of this debate.
30. Molohan, Areas of Tanganyika.
31. Gluckman, “Tribalism.”
32. Durkheim, Division of Labor; Durkheim, Professional Ethics; Bryceson, How Africa Works.
33. Tostensen, Tveden and Vaa, Associational Life; Simone and Abouhani, Urban Africa; Jua, “Body and Soul”; Meagher, Identity Economics; Lindell, Africa's Informal Workers; Niger-Thomas, “Fair or Foul Play”; Seppälä, “With or Against”; Simone, “Linking Irregular Economies.”
34. Bryceson, “Acknowledging the Inevitable”; Bryceson, “Rural Labour Transformations”; Bryceson, “Scramble in Africa.”
35. Bryceson, How Africa Works
36. Bryceson, How Africa Works
37. For example, the mungiki of Nairobi who have extorted control of many of the city's major bus routes making everyday life for commuters a trial of endurance. See Anderson, “Vigilantes, Violence, and Politics”; Mungai and Samper, “‘No Mercy, No Remorse.’”