The changing nature of the peri-urban zone in Africa: Evidence from Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania

Research on the peri-urban zones of African cities since the mid-1980s has focused around three main themes, these being peri-urban agriculture as a s urvival strategy, debates about the relative efficiencies of peri-urban agr iculture, and the question of production priorities. Drawing on recent evid ence from Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania, this paper suggests that a combination of structural adjustment measures and the eased economic crisis in Tanzani a has changed conditions, the result of which has been the increasing commo dification of land in the peri-urban zone during the 1990s. This has turned the peri-urban zone more into a zone of investment and economic opportunit y, rather than a zone of survival, with the result that the poorer urban gr oups are being increasingly excluded. A further complication concerns confu sion arising out of current Tanzanian land law, and particularly the tensio ns between customary and statutory law.