Rapid sub-urban developments harm poor dwellers

By Aloyce Menda

The poor dwellers in urban peripherals are subjects to severe poverty due to extending infrastructure and rapid building construction towards their areas. As these inevitable developments take place land demand increases and the poor dwellers relying on it became the victims of eviction orders.

The problems of peri-urban villages vary in severity but are present in many areas of Tanzania. This has attracted researchers and already two scholars are conducting a study in the peripherals of Kinondoni and Mbeya municipalities.

Under the auspices of the Research on Poverty Alleviation (REPOA), Davis Mwamfupe and Salome Fute have so far recognized that the problem of poverty in the study areas is linked to environmental degradation. The municipal councils and village governments lack sufficient capacity to deal with rapid urban expansion and control unsustainable use of natural resources.

However, the study is not yet accomplished and these preliminary findings were presented and discussed during the 10th REPOA Annual Research Workshop held in Dar es Salaam recently.

The researchers were prompted by a desire to unveil the causes of poverty to peri-urban farmers due to uncontrolled conversion of their farmlands to urban uses. They also wanted to uncover livelihood diversification and environmental degradation due to rapid urbanization in the two municipality peripherals.

According to the preliminary research results the poor households is the study areas diversify to survive. They engage in short-term activities that pay only marginally but rather promptly after losing part of their farmland. Some income earning activities contributes to environmental degradation like charcoal burning and sand mining. Other activities are low-income earners such as petty food vending and casual labour.

The researchers noted that livelihood diversification is not confined to the poor as the better off too have tendency to diversify for other reasons. The “need to earn more profit” was noted as the main factor of livelihood diversification amongst traders in the better-off households.

The revelations in the on-going research are not unique in Tanzania. The Dar es Salaam City authority have in the past 30 to 40 years tried hard to control environmental degradation due to rapid urban expansion but failed due to lack of adequate resources. The same problem is common in Mwanza, Arusha, Mbeya, Morogoro and Tanga municipalities.

Today, Dar es Salaam is dominated with squatters, majority of which are permanent buildings. According to official reports, about 70 per cent of residential area is covered with squatters, which are, occupied by 80 per cent of the city dwellers.

In 2002, the government Ministry of Lands and Human Settlements inaugurated a grand project to survey and allocate 20,000 new building plots to the city residents. Implementation of this project is at final stage after allocation of more than 10,000 plots in Temeke, Ilala and Kinondoni districts.

Some villages such as Boko, Mjimwema, Kibamba, Buyuni and Bunju, previously documented as peri-urban villages with farming activities were surveyed and their land reallocated as new building plots. Though the villagers were compensated and allocated with building plots, they lost a permanent income generating occupation, which is farming.

Most of these villagers diversified to start new income generating activities such as sand mining, quarrying and charcoal making. The activities contributed to environmental degradation and unplanned urban expansion along major entry roads of Morogoro, Bagamoyo, Kilwa and Nyerere (formerly Pugu Road). Some villagers whose farming lands were reallocated moved into these new expansions to continue with farming and charcoal making. In these new settlements, land speculation is ripe and extraction activities particularly sand mining and quarrying are noticed.

Parallel with these destructive activities are public health hazards with communicable deceases such as malaria, diarrhea and typhoid killing vulnerable victims mostly children below 10.

ENDS