| The desire to utilize the resources of the Lower Rufiji Basin for Tanzania's national economic development led to a continuous attempt on the part of both colonial and post-colonial planners to control the waters of the Rufiji River. Between 1945 and 1985, development projects formed a nexus where competing environmental ideologies were expressed and shaped by the Rufiji ecology. This dissertation uses archival, oral, and geographical sources to examine the different perceptions groups of people—local residents, colonial and post-colonial administrators, foreign planners, and university researchers—have held regarding the Rufiji waterscape and how these varying interpretations led to the construction of conflicting plans for the region's development. Areas investigated include: local water use and production systems, British colonial agriculture programs and resource management, post-colonial resource policies and ujamaa villagization, the debate surrounding the Stiegler's Gorge hydroelectric dam, and international non-governmental organizations' (NGOs) involvement in the region.; The transition from a colonial territory to an independent state in 1961 had only a superficial effect on ground-level development planning in the Lower Rufiji. Instead of a change in approach, planning methods, and goals between the different administrations, what one finds is a practically seamless transition between the political administrations and a surprising continuity between different planning regimes. An examination of how locality transforms the development process better explains the subtle changes between administrative planning methods. By looking at development on a number of levels, this study shows how the little understood and changing Rufiji waterscape challenged the burgeoning development science industry. Even the most meticulously planned project could not account for the unpredictable rise in the river's water level.; In contrast to many environmental histories, this study looks at the environment not in terms of landscape, but as a waterscape. It argues that by shifting the focus of research in riverine areas like the Lower Rufiji from the terrain to the water that shapes it, historians are able to illuminate the subtle differences between landscapes and waterscapes and deepen our understanding of the importance of Africa's waterways to the continent's development. |
