Jesper Bosse Jønsson

Miners' magic: artisanal mining, the albino fetish and murder in Tanzania

A series of murders of albinos in Tanzania’s north-west mining frontier has been shrouded in a discourse of primitivism by the international and national press, sidestepping the significance of the contextual circumstances of an artisanal mining boom firmly embedded in a global commodity chain and local profit maximisation. The murders are connected to gold and diamond miners’ efforts to * Deborah Fahy Bryceson, a sociologist/geographer and graduate of the University of Dar es Salaam, lived in Tanzania between 1971 and 1981 and has continued since then to work with University of Dar es Salaam colleagues on Tanzanian rural and urban subject matter. Jesper Bosse Jonsson, a geographer, has worked in Tanzania for ten years on rural livelihoods and unfolding developments in mining, both as an academic and NGO representative. Richard Sherrington, an anthropologist, has researched development and mining issues in Tanzania since 2000, specifically artisanal diamond mining in Mwanza and Shinyanga. We are grateful to Ray Abrahams, Simeon Mesaki and Koen Stroeken for elucidating comments during the article’s preparation and to unnamed referees for their criticisms of our paper.

Unearthing treasure and trouble: mining as an impetus to urbanisation in Tanzania

Abstract Despite an abundance of mineral wealth and an ancient history of gold trading, Tanzania is a relative latecomer to the experience of being a mineral-dominated national economy. Both the British colonial state and Nyereres post-colonial state avoided encouraging, and only reluctantly provided support to, large- and small-scale mining. Farming constituted the livelihood for the vast majority of the population and peasant agricultural exports provided the main source of foreign exchange for the country. Now, however, Tanzania has become one of Africas main gold producers and the number one destination for non-oil foreign direct investment after South Africa. This article traces the development of gold mining and urban growth in Tanzania with the aim of identifying if, when and where these two processes interact with one another. It explores the triggers, mechanisms and durability of their fusion and synergies over time.

Prostitution or partnership? Wifestyles in Tanzanian artisanal gold-mining settlements

Tanzania, along with several other African countries, is experiencing a national mining boom, which has prompted hundreds of thousands of men and women to migrate to mineral-rich locations. At these sites, relationships between the sexes defy the sexual norms of the surrounding countryside to embrace new relational amalgams of polygamy, monogamy and promiscuity. This article challenges the assumption that female prostitution is widespread. Using interview data with women migrants, we delineate six ‘wifestyles’, namely sexual-cum-conjugal relationships between men and women that vary in their degree of sexual and material commitment. In contrast to bridewealth payments, which involved elders formalising marriages through negotiations over reproductive access to women, sexual negotiations and relations in mining settlements involve men and women making liaisons and co-habitation arrangements directly between each other without third-party intervention. Economic interdependence may evolve thereafter with the possibility of women, as well as men, offering material support to their sex partners.

Beyond the artisanal mining site: migration, housing capital accumulation and indirect urbanization in East Africa

ABSTRACT During the past 30 years, Tanzania has experienced successive precious mineral rushes led by artisanal miners. Their settlement, livelihood and housing strategies have evolved amidst high mobility in pursuit of mineral wealth. Cumulatively, the spatial movement of artisanal miners and an associated following of economically motivated migrant service providers have catalysed large-scale “direct urbanization” at artisanal mine sites-cum-small towns. These settlements have been generally characterized by relatively makeshift accommodation, which may mask accumulated savings of in situ earnings for housing investment elsewhere. In this article, in addition to documenting the mine-led direct urbanization process, we draw attention to a subsequent “indirect urbanization” phenomenon, whereby many successful artisanal miners and other entrepreneurial mining settlement residents make strategic house building investments in larger towns and cities. In anticipation of declining mineral yields and retirement from days of “roughing it” in mining sites, they endeavour to channel savings into housing in more urbanized locations, aiming to diversify into profitable business activities, living a life with better physical and social amenities. Their second-wave onward migration from mine sites encompasses more diverse destinations, particularly regional towns and cities, which accommodate their work and family life cycle needs and lifestyle preferences. Such mine-led direct and indirect urbanization processes arise from sequential migration decision-making of participants in Tanzania’s artisanal mining sector. In this article, we interrogate mining settlement residents’ locational choices on the basis of fieldwork survey findings from four artisanal gold and diamond mining settlements in Tanzania’s mineral-rich regions of Geita, Mwanza and Shinyanga, and from in-depth interviews with miners-cum-entrepreneurs residing in Mwanza, Tanzania’s second largest city, situated in the heart of Tanzania’s gold fields.