Abstract: Forest plantations started in Tanzania during the German period and were further developed during the British colonial period and postcolonial period. Forest plantation was carried out on both a large scale owned by the government for commercial purposes and a small scale run by Native Authorities for use by African communities surrounding them. The establishment of forest reserves involved the alienation and demarcation of large portions of land that in effect resulted in changing land use habits of land formerly used for other activities, like peasant farming and livestock herding. The adjustments made in pastoralism, peasant subsistence farming and human settlements were unavoidable outcomes of the establishment of forest plantations. This paper uses archival, oral and secondary sources to show the dynamics in land use change in the studied areas. We argue in this paper that, forest plantations in both colonial and post-colonial Tanzania, created new forms of land use that could not be sustained in the older practices of land use. We use Sao-Hill Forest Plantation (SHFP) located in Mufindi–Iringa region and Kilimanjaro Forest Plantation (KFP) including West, North and South Forest Plantations located in Kilimanjaro region to show the impacts of the establishment of forest plantations on land use practices by societies surrounding them.
Keywords: Forest Plantations, Land Acquisition, Land Use, Squatting System, Local Communities, Sao-Hill Forest Plantation, Kilimanjaro Forest Plantations.
Title: A Development Narrative of a Rural Economy: The Politics of Forest Plantations and Land Use in Mufindi and Kilimanjaro, Tanzania; 1920s to 2000s
Author: Maxmillian J. Chuhila, Andrea Azizi Kifyasi
International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research
ISSN 2348-3164 (online), ISSN 2348-3156 (Print)
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