Ujamaa Villages

In the mid 20th century, many African leaders and policymakers sought to transform their countries into socialist societies, mainly as a possible method to overcome the extreme underdevelopment and hopeless poverty that colonialism had left them with. In 1967, Tanzania initiated one of the most important efforts of such a policy. President Julius Nyerere attempted to transform the rural countryside of Tanzania into a cooperative agrarian society. His plan centered on communal living, where everyone worked in hope to benefit the community, rather than focus on individual success. Nyerere’s ideology was an attempt to eliminate class struggles and competitive acquisition of wealth by implementing what he believed as “traditional African values,” therefore avoiding Western development models. However, by the 1980’s, Tanzania had regressed in terms of economic growth, and Nyerere’s African socialism was widely regarded as a failure. In this paper I will argue that African socialis...