Famine, Impoverishment and the Creation of a Labor Reserve in Central Tanzania

An often under-recognized response to drought by members of pastoral and mixed farming communities in Africa is semi-regular migration in search of wage employment. Among the Gogo of the Dodoma and Singida Regions of central Tanzania this strategy has increasingly, since the 1940s, been the response of individuals to a cycle of drought, loss of livestock, and impoverishment. Before World War II hardly any people left Ugogo for wage labor; by 1955 20 per cent of the population was estimated to be absent at any particular time, with the proportion rising sharply during years of drought. Today, local stereotypes depict the Wagogo as beggars and casual laborers throughout Tanzania. The transitional period between 1942 and 1955 was marked by four major famines in which thousands of people died of malnutrition and associated diseases. These famines also marked a dramatic change in the distribution of livestock ownership as wealthy cattle owners no longer used livestock to control the labor of food deficit households and individuals found themselves forced into migrant labor. Colonial policy during and after the war helped precipitate these changes through labor conscription and the demand for labor from the Groundnut Scheme in the Kongwa area of the region.