Browsing by Subject "Tanzania"
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Item Animating Children’s Views: An Innovative Methodology for Quantitative Research(2021-02) Levison, DeborahUNCRC Article 12 (Convention on the Rights of the Child) states that children's views and perspectives should be listened to, especially when it comes to policy decisions that affect them. In theory, this is great—but it's hardly the norm, particularly in the Global South. Professor Deborah Levison and her research assistant, PhD student Anna Bolgrien, sought to develop a way to survey children in the Global South about difficulties and challenges they may be facing in everyday life, which had to be done without putting children at risk of being overheard and punished by their family members or communities. The result: Animating Children's Views, an open-source, human rights–based interview methodology using simple cartoon vignettes featuring different scenarios (e.g., peer pressure, child labor, street harassment) and a scale of emoji faces ranging from happy to sad. After collaborating with an artist and an animator to create the vignettes, Levison and Bolgrien worked with teams of local collaborators in Nepal and Tanzania to gather quantitative data, with plans to expand the project to Brazil. They hope that other organizations will adopt the Animating Children's Views methodology and use its online library of images and animations to help influence policy changes on a global scale. "The point is that whatever kids have to say, we should be listening to it more," Levison says.Item Arusha, Tanzania(2012-04-04) Min, MichaelItem The effects of family planning type and prevalent use on fertility and under-five mortality in Tanzania.(2012-05) Ghiselli, Margherita EmiliaCurrent projections estimate that the population of Tanzania will triple by 2050, reaching 110 million. Voluntary family planning (FP) is the best strategy to curb population growth. However, contraception availability varies across regions. This study accounts for the regional context in which contraceptive choices -- and reproductive outcomes -- occur. Its research question, then, is: what is the effect of the regional context on total fertility rate and under-five mortality rate? This study employs the 2010 Tanzania Demographics and Health Survey (DHS), a representative probability sample of 10,139 women ages 15 to 49. To mimic randomization, regions are matched on education, wealth, and urban-rural status, and assumed to be exchangeable save for their exposure to an FP method. The region-level independent effect of a specific FP method on total fertility rate and under-five mortality rate is calculated for different types of FP methods (i.e., oral contraceptives, injectables, condoms, sterilization, traditional methods). Also, population projections are re-calculated for incremental prevalence of each method. Only permanent methods significantly reduce the total fertility rate, with an average causal effect of -1.59 children (-2.55, -0.65). Indeed, they alone guarantee the end of reproductive events. No method significantly reduces under-five mortality. Population growth trends would be most impacted by oral contraceptives (from 40 million in 2010 to 33 million in 2025 if prevalence increases by 19%), followed by injectables (42 million in 2025 with 19% prevalence increase). This difference is due to continued use of oral contraceptives through a woman's twenties and thirties, while injectables are mostly used by women in their twenties. These results suggest that sterilization immediately impacts on a region's total fertility rate. However, long-term investments in oral and injectable contraceptives will have a significant impact reducing population growth, and should be given funding priority.Item Embodying Empowerment: Gender, Schooling, Relationships and Life History in Tanzania(2016-05) Willemsen, LauraThis dissertation explores the interplay of education and empowerment as it is lived by seven young Tanzanian women and developed at a unique all-girls’ secondary school in Tanzania. Drawing on interviews and participant observation from eight trips over four years, this study offers a longitudinal, ethnographic exploration of the school, Sasema Secondary School for Girls, to explore the rationale and production of curricula, pedagogies and practices that draw on global, national and local notions of empowerment and education. This study illuminates the tensions, vulnerabilities, feats and aspirations in young women’s lives through employing a life history approach focusing on three young women’s complete life histories. It examines the role that schooling has played, and has not played, in what these women describe as a contingent movement from vulnerability toward increasing security and well-being. This dissertation advances two main arguments: First, by exploring the practices and pedagogies at Sasema that young women have found to be valuable in their lives both at and beyond school, it demonstrates the significance of, and possibilities for, emotional and social learning through schooling while underscoring the importance of care in schools. As such, this research reinforces calls to conceptualize educational quality beyond the metrics of academic knowledge or vocational skills, traditionally thought of as schooling’s raison d’être, toward more holistic notions of education for the whole person. Second, this study complicates and adds nuance to accepted notions of empowerment through education by offering deeply contextualized portraits of young women’s lives as they understand them to be unfolding. Although empowerment is frequently analyzed in economic or political terms, this work reveals that, for these young women, empowerment is also profoundly psychosocial and even corporeal. Furthermore, additional forces, such as family, religion and community, are at play in their notions of processes that advance their well-being and the well-being of others. As such, this study reveals disjunctures between empowerment through education as it lived by young women in Tanzania and as discussed by scholars of international development, education and gender.Item Environment and development: essays on the link between household welfare and the environment in developing countries(2014-07) Rogers, Martha H.In this dissertation, I present three methods of evaluating local populations' interactions with their natural environments using household-level data from Tanzania. To date, little effort has been made to evaluate the non-market benefits of natural resources for local populations and this dissertation makes important contributions to this budding research area. First, I apply a travel cost model and estimate that households in Kagera, Tanzania are willing to pay approximately $200 per year (2012 U.S. dollars) for local community forests access, a value equal to roughly 25 percent of annual total household expenditures. Second, using a long-term panel data set I estimate that an additional hour required to collect firewood when a child is young translates into $475 (2010 USD) in lost earnings over 30 years, roughly 1.7 percent of income. Finally, I show evidence of significant interdependencies between a household's agricultural production and food consumption decisions. This inter-dependency implies that programs aimed at environmental conservation through agricultural intensification may have important unintended consequences on a household's food consumption and subsequent micronutrient levels. In sum, the results in this dissertation indicate that households in Tanzania interact with their environments in complex ways and receive significant non-market benefits from natural resources.Item Environmental Education for Forest Resources Management in Loliondo Area, Northern Tanzania(2018-02) Silisyene, MajoryIn this dissertation, I analyze the impact of three environmental education strategies implemented in rural northern Tanzania focused on forest-related knowledge. In Chapter Five, I assess the impact of two strategies—face-to-face group discussion and mobile phone texting—on knowledge. I also compare the effectiveness of the two strategies in terms of change in knowledge among participants and cost-effectiveness. I find a positive association between environmental education and knowledge, but only for the face-to-face group discussion strategy. In Chapter Six, I assess the impact of using a photo-map (a high-resolution map made from satellite imagery) on knowledge about forest health status. Increasingly, satellite images are being used for knowledge transfer and land use planning as they facilitate visual learning. While survey data show no evidence of increased knowledge, qualitative data suggest that knowledge increased among participants. To understand the actual health status of the forest, I analyzed satellite imagery and determined how the forest's land use land cover changed between 2003 and 2014. I compared land cover results with participants' knowledge about health status. Results suggest that people's answers to the question about forest health status were politicized; participants ensured that their answers aligned with community's conservation obligations. In Chapter Seven, I assess factors that influence engagement in environmentally friendly behaviors and found that, as in previous studies, both knowledge and sense of personal responsibility are strong determinants of engagement among people in Loliondo.Item Ilula, Tanzania(2012-04-04) Amundson, Will; Melcher, LauraItem Intergenerational Relationships and Eldercare in Rural Tanzania: A Life Course Perspective on The Implications of Social Change on Families(2014-12) Msechu, JuneStrategically, eldercare in Tanzania is based on a family based model in which every individual is presumed to be a valued member of a well-wishing family network. This assumes presence of willingness and ability of individual family networks to maintain kinship ties and the traditions necessary for sustaining mutual intergenerational support. Given vast socio-political changes in recent decades, including policy reforms, migration trends, altered educational opportunities, and technological advancements, this study examines how experiences of aging and the provision of eldercare have changed since the time of independence in 1961. Using a life course approach, my research documents lived experiences to examine how willingness, ability, and motivations for caregiving have been transformed over time, while also exploring subsequent policy implications of this knowledge. I employed mixed methods (participant observation, life history interviews, key informant interviews, focus group, and brief questionnaires) to collect empirical evidence from a randomly selected sample of matched pairs of elderly persons and their adult children. Research questions explored included: What is the state of intergenerational relationships and eldercare? Who cares within families (roles)? How and to what extent have "traditional" strategies been sustained over time? To what extent are assumptions upon which policy proposals for the future of elder care are based validated by current trends in families and communities? My findings revealed that the state of eldercare and intergenerational relationships is exceedingly complex and not yet well captured by current aging discourses. Most individuals pursue intergenerational solidarity and desire to provide for their "own". However, in truth, families are overstrained by the burgeoning needs for care. Migration and emergent social challenges, notably a struggling agriculture sector, fosters noteworthy changes in perceptions and reactions to care needs. Younger generations, particularly the "educated", fabricate newer ways of doing family such as modifying family structures and enlarging caregiver networks to include market-based caregivers so as to promote personal social mobility. Gender hierarchies are incessantly contested but women remain underprivileged. As key caregivers, women play poorly recognized and inadequately supported roles within families. Ultimately, this study offers a nuanced description and recommends areas for further research and interventions.Item Lion attacks on humans in southeastern Tanzania: risk factors and perceptions.(2009-12) Kushnir, HadasLions attacked over 1000 people in Tanzania between 1990 and 2007, killing at least two-thirds of the victims. This extreme form of human-wildlife conflict has a major impact on the lives and livelihoods of local communities and threatens lion conservation in Tanzania, home to the largest lion population in Africa. Working in the two districts with the highest number of lion attacks, Rufiji and Lindi, my research examines the problem from both ecological and human perspectives at multiple scales. Overall, I aimed to: (1) identify human, ecological, and landscape-level risk factors for lion attacks, (2) determine how people currently react to attacks and what methods they believe could help mitigate attacks, and (3) understand how people perceive attacks and how these perceptions align with reality. Chapter 1, "Using Landscape Characteristics to Predict Risk of Lion Attacks in Southeastern Tanzania," examines the problem at the attack level across both districts. Using knowledge of attack locations, land cover, and important landscape features, I was able to model attack probability and then map the modeled probability in Rufiji and Lindi districts. I also extended the model to other areas in southeastern Tanzania to determine how well the model predicts high-risk areas beyond the study districts. Such a technique has potential to predict high-risk areas for future conflict in order to pinpoint prevention efforts. Chapter 2, "Human and Ecological Risk Factors for Unprovoked Lion Attacks on Humans in Southeastern Tanzania," compares human activity patterns during attacks between the two districts and examines risk at the village level in the areas with the highest concentration of attacks in Rufiji and Lindi districts. Human activity patterns during attacks differ significantly between the two districts and in each district they match with the details of daily life the area. By comparing villages with attacks to neighboring villages without attacks, I was able to identify a number of important risk factors related to wildlife presence and daily activities. Additionally, I examined the local response to lion attacks and views on appropriate measures to prevent attacks. Knowledge about local risk factors and response to attacks, and local views on prevention measures are all critical components of formulating methods to prevent future attacks. Chapter 3, "Reality vs. Perception: How Rural Tanzanians View Risks from Man-Eating Lions," examines human-lion conflict at the level of the individual by determining how people perceive the risk of lion attacks and how well these perceptions match reality. My findings indicate that even though people tend to exaggerate their overall risk, they correctly perceive specifics related to risk. This supports the need for using multiple methodologies to assess risk perceptions because only determining overall perceptions limits findings and under-represents local knowledge. The three chapters each provide different yet important perspectives on the problem that will be useful in formulating and implementing methods to reduce lion attacks on people in southeastern Tanzania. The unique combination of methodologies and scales of investigation also provide a useful framework for studies that investigate human-wildlife conflict worldwide.Item Nisaidie nif anye mwenyewe, Помоги мне это сделать самому:a comparative case study of the implementation of Montessori pedagogy in the United Republic of Tanzania and the Russian Federation(2010-09) Schnepf, Candy A.The system of education developed by Maria Montessori, noted Italian feminist, anthropologist and physician, is the single largest pedagogy in the world with over 22,000 public, private, parochial, and charter schools on six continents, enduring even as other teaching methods have waxed and waned. Despite its international diffusion and longevity, research into the pedagogy is glaringly absent from mainstream educational literature. The purpose of this study is, first, to explore Dr. Montessori's involvement in international conferences and examine how the exchange of ideas by participants may have influenced her pedagogy. Second, this study investigates the implementation of Montessori pedagogy in two countries, the United Republic of Tanzania and the Russian Federation, focusing on the interplay of teacher training, classroom practice, and culture. This comparative multiple case study was designed to differentiate what is universal in the Montessori pedagogy and what is country specific or culture bound. Observations in classrooms guided by a checklist of ten essential elements, interviews with teachers, trainers and leaders of Montessori associations, and historical and contemporary documents are the primary sources of data. The results of the data indicate that limited economic resources, the quality of training, government regulations and availability of Montessori books translated into the Kiswahili and Russian languages influence the implementation of Montessori pedagogy in the United Republic of Tanzania and the Russian Federation to a greater extent than culture. Montessori pedagogy as implemented in Tanzania is thriving and is providing much needed quality education for young children. Several factors influence its implementation, but poverty permeates through all the classrooms and is the most significant. Montessori pedagogy as implemented in Russia also is thriving, in spite of the challenge of consistent training. Impressive efforts such as the work of the Belgorod Montessori Study Center to develop the theoretical understanding and practical applications of cosmic education and Michailova Montessori School's experiment in integrating into a self-managed government school may determine whether Montessori remains on the periphery of pedagogy or moves to the center, influencing future policy.Item Pedagogy as Social Practice and Teachers' Pedagogic Choices in Tanzanian Primary Schools(2020-01) Chachage, KristeenAmidst the current push for improving the quality of education in Sub-Saharan Africa, a technicist approach to pedagogy, which focuses on inputs and technical teacher training, has come to predominate international aid to education and much of the related literature. In this dissertation, I argue that considering the intertwinement and simultaneity of multiple sociocultural aspects of classroom encounters can lead to deeper understanding of why teachers choose particular pedagogical practices. Sociocultural aspects include how classrooms and interactions are organized, teachers’ conceptions of knowledge, and moral aspects, such as what is considered good and proper behavior. I set out to understand from teachers’ perspectives, why they preferred certain pedagogical practices. I specifically analyzed how the availability and organization of resources, the competing discourses found in the curriculum and examinations, and moral norms and ideals influenced teachers’ practices, using the conceptual framework of pedagogy as a nexus of practice. I drew on ethnographic data gathered through intensive participant observation, informal discussions, semi-structured interviews, demographic surveys and review of curricular, policy and teaching materials in two Tanzanian public primary schools to understand teachers’ perspectives and identify key influences on their pedagogic choices. I found that the concepts of competence-based curriculum and learner-centered practices driving school quality reforms are largely tangential to teachers’ frames of reference. The teachers’ decisions are based on ensuring that students pass terminal exams and that they learn to live with/in the community’s norms for obedience, respect and cooperation. Their choices are further constrained by the material conditions in which they work, and by the degree to which teachers felt empowered to flexibly use available resources to meet student needs. These findings have implications for the feasibility of and approaches toward changing teachers’ pedagogic practices and systemic approaches to educational change.Item Resettling Buha: a social history of resettled communities in Kigoma Region, Tanzania, 1933-1975.(2011-05) Weiskopf, Julie MarieResidents of lowland Buha, in western Tanzania’s Kigoma Region, faced statesponsored, forced resettlement campaigns in both the colonial and postcolonial periods. In the 1930s, British colonial officials compelled those living in the easternmost areas to resettle closer to the roadway as a public health intervention in response to epidemic sleeping sickness. In the 1970s, Tanzanian officials forced everyone in the region to resettle again, this time in African socialist, or ujamaa, villages. This dissertation examines these schemes as part of a long-term history of resettlement in Buha, demonstrating how resettlement was a decades-long, unfolding process for both Ha people and government officials. In particular, I examine the interplay between the moral visions that different government officials and Ha people had for resettled areas and the material constraints in which they operated. Neither group could unilaterally implement their priorities but instead had to work within a series of limitations. For Ha people, this involved managing the forms of interference that government settlement and natural resource policies placed on their choice of domicile and use of resources. For state officials, they not only had to contend with competing Ha priorities, but also with resource limitations, internal divisions within their bureaucracies, and their own ideological commitments to western science and economic development. In the end, resettled communities created in the wake of removal were not the results of the transformative power of state planning, but instead formed at the intersection of Ha and governmental desires to replicate, adjust, or revolutionize Ha lives and livelihoods.Item Selian Hospital in Arusha, Tanzania(2012-04-21) Strohm, MaikenItem Social Capital, Education, and Earning: The Important Role of Peer Relationships for Marginalized Tanzanian Youth(2016-05) Pellowski Wiger, NancyGiven low secondary school completion rates, high rates of youth unemployment, and the importance of relationships in Tanzania, there is a need for nuanced and critical analyses examining the link between social capital, education, and earning for young people. This study drew on theories of social capital from a critical perspective (Bourdieu, 1986, Stanton-Salazar, 1997, 2011) to examine how Tanzanian youth were able, and at times unable, to draw on and utilize their social capital to succeed in education and earning, particularly when faced with gender, economic, and social class inequalities. Drawing on longitudinal survey and interview data over four years from youth attending two boarding secondary schools implementing a youth entrepreneurship training program in Tanzania, this study examined how youth drew on peers and adults, at school and at home, to further their learning and earning goals. Findings showed that, while positive adult relationships furthered earning and learning outcomes, relationships with peers were particularly important for youth, in contrast to other studies focusing solely on youths’ relationships with adults (see, for example, Bajaj, 2009; Stanton-Salazar & Dornbusch, 1995). Females and orphans drew on peer support to supplement a lack of adult support for learning and earning, particularly when faced with challenges such as gender discrimination at home or in the workplace. In addition, older youth (ages 17-20) and youth who financially contributed to their households reported drawing on peers, especially when they lacked adult support for education. Non-orphans, younger youth (ages 11-16), and youth financially responsible for others drew on increased peer support at home over time, particularly to supplement a lack of adult support for earning. Male youth also drew on increased peer support at school for learning, and increased peer support at school and at home for earning. When faced with inequalities in school and the labor market, such as high costs associated with schooling, gender discrimination, unequal land rights, and sexual exploitation while earning, youth drew on peer support to supplement a lack of adult support for education and earning. These findings identify new possibilities for social capital research and have important implications for education and youth livelihood programming as arenas to build social capital for youth from marginalized backgrounds.Item Society, state, and infant welfare: negotiating medical interventions in colonial Tanzania, 1920--1950(2010-07) Masebo, OswaldThis dissertation is a historical analysis of colonial state infant welfare initiatives from preventive programs of the 1920s and early 1930s to policies that integrated preventive and curative medicine in the late 1930s and 1940s in colonial Tanzania. It argues that the development of these medical interventions was a negotiated process between colonial government officials, peasants, local chiefs, welfare workers, African dressers, and medical missions. In the 1920s the British colonial government initiated the welfare programs to reduce high infant mortality rates. Government officials explained poor infant survival in terms of maternal ignorance and focused on advising mothers on proper infant care, feeding, and hygiene. The government trained African welfare workers who performed the actual work of advising mothers in the communities. Peasants, however, challenged the early preventive programs as narrowly conceived both because they ignored local medical knowledge and indigenous practices and because they excluded western curative medicine that would help them tackle infant diseases such as malaria. Using their local chiefs, peasants demanded that the colonial government incorporate curative medicine in its welfare policies. Their bargaining strategies to achieve these demands included boycotting government-run welfare centers and refusing to pay taxes. The government eventually incorporated curative medicine in its welfare programs in the late 1930s, and it trained African dressers in preventive and curative medicine. The evidence for this dissertation comes from oral interviews, written archival documents, ethnographic accounts, and missionary and explorers' writings. This evidence has allowed me to explore the complex problem of infant welfare, a topic that has not received adequate attention from historians writing about Africa.Item Tanzania - Sustainable horticulture crop production(2010-02-02) Nishwitz, JenniferItem Upholding customary land rights through formalization? evidence from Tanzania‘s program of land reform(2013-01) Fairley, Elizabeth C.Many nations in the "global south" have overhauled their land policies and laws in recent decades, often attempting to simultaneously uphold customary land tenure, and to bring informal land relationships into a formal, standardized land administration system. Both are now seen as pivotal for strengthening security of tenure for land users. The program to advance formal land administration systems and to secure customary land tenure in Tanzania stands out as a case where implementation of this "hybrid" approach to land reform is well under way. Through the analysis of empirical research collected at the sites of implementation, this paper considers the impact of land administration reform currently taking place in village lands, and explores the interplay between formal systems and customary land tenure. Is customary tenure being incorporated into the statutory system, and are diverse forms of customary tenure being accommodated? How are customary land users being impacted?Item Worldly encounters : the politics of global governance and Women’s Human Rights in East Africa.(2009-07) Koomen, Johanna EngelinaGlobal governance and international women's human rights campaigns are always translated and negotiated locally. This dissertation examines the complex politics of international women's human rights campaigns in East Africa by focusing on the social practices that characterize these projects. I investigate three campaigns to promote women's human rights and empowerment. First, I examine efforts to promote legal redress for Rwandan victims of sexual violence during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Second, I study projects seeking to eliminate "harmful traditional practices" such as female genital cutting in East Africa. I focus on initiatives in pastoralist villages in northern Tanzania, as well as efforts in Kenya and Uganda. Third, I turn my attention to emerging campaigns to promote African women's "empowerment" and entrepreneurialism through microcredit and microfinance. By exploring the socially-situated practices of international women's human rights campaigns - their translations and negotiations - this project seeks to illustrate how the boundaries and identities of global governance are unstably reconfigured and reproduced.