##issue.issue##

##issue.vol## 13 ##issue.no## 1 (2024)

Operation Kihamo: Sleeping Sickness Control and the Agrarian Question of the Kilombero Valley, 1940s–1961

https://doi.org/10.56279.13.1.6
Geofrey Emmanuel Ntobi
Dar es Salaam University College of Education University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Maxmillian Julius Chuhila
University of Dar es Salaam

Corresponding Author(s) : Geofrey Emmanuel Ntobi

geofrey.ntobi@udsm.ac.tz

Journal of Humanities & Social Science (JHSS), ##issue.vol## 13 ##issue.no## 1 (2024)

##article.abstract##

In the aftermath of the WWII, some historians have typified the post-war period as
akin to a second colonial occupation, characterised by ambitious development
initiatives. These initiatives, influenced in part by the aftermath of the war, were
also driven by government efforts to stimulate rural economic activity. Using the
example of sleeping sickness control in the Kilombero Valley as a case study of a
rural intervention, this paper examines how such campaigns were emblematic of
an underlying development agenda in the region. Drawing on empirical evidence
from archival research and fieldwork in the valley, we argue that government
interventions in sleeping sickness control went beyond mere eradication efforts.
Instead, the colonial administration used the epidemic as a pretext to enforce
stringent control measures and implement transformative rural development
programmes aimed at modernising the agricultural sector. These initiatives
included the establishment of concentrated settlements, the improvement of
farming practices among rural peasants, and the introduction of new crops and
mandatory cultivation of some selected subsistence and commercial crops.
Generally, sleeping sickness control campaigns were used as a caveat to implement
both overt and covert development objectives.

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Operation Kihamo: Sleeping Sickness Control and the Agrarian Question of the Kilombero Valley, 1940s–1961. (2024). Journal of Humanities & Social Science (JHSS), 13(1). https://doi.org/10.56279.13.1.6
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