Browsing by Author "Komba, Yustina Samwel"

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    A socio-economic history of coffee production in Mbinga District, Tanzania, c. 1920 - 2015
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2021-03) Komba, Yustina Samwel; Ehlers, Anton; Kangalawe, Hezron; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of History.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The research focused on the foundation, development, fortunes, and socio-economic impact of the coffee industry on smallholder coffee producers in the Mbinga District for the period from 1920 to 2015. Drawing on archival and oral sources, it analysed the historical interactions between the coffee actors in the coffee industry, namely the state, the co-operatives, private coffee enterprises, and smallholder coffee producers. In the process, Gavin Fridell’s “coffee statecraft” and James Scott’s “weapon of theweak” approaches are utilised as theoretical points of departure. While the colonial state laid the foundation for state control of the coffee industry through the co-operative marketing system, the postcolonial state’s interventions shaped the trajectory of the coffee industry between the 1960s and 1990 under the Ujamaa policy. TheEuropean Economic Community grant for the coffee-improvement programmes between 1977 and the late 1980s influenced the expansion of the coffee industry in the Mbinga District.From the late 1980s, the Tanzanian government implemented economic liberalisation which marked the end of Ujamaa principles and the transition from state monopoly to the free-market system. The research demonstrates how the transition from the state monopoly of coffee production under co-operative societies to co-existence with the private enterprises has resulted in entrenched hegemonic and exploitative practices at the expense of smallholder coffee producers between the 1990s and 2015. There is also a focus on the role of women in coffee production and marketing in the Mbinga District over time. While coffee has been regarded as “man’s crop”, the complexity of women’s participation in coffee production and marketing is revealed in the findings. This thesis argues that the history of the coffee industry in the Mbinga District evolvedthrough the interaction between the state, the coffee producers, co-operativesand later private coffee enterprises, all of which have impacted on the socio-economic livelihood and fortunes of the smallholder coffee producers in a variety of ways.