Poverty, Class and Gender in Rural Africa

With the achievement of independence for the states of Africa came the necessity of internal development. The interpretation of subsequent poor economic performance is too often polarized between a dogged defence of socialist intervention and an equally dogmatic prescription of the role of the state. This book aims to expose the inadequacy of such polarity with a detailed empirical identification of a century of African change. Focusing on a case study of Tanzania, the book describes the emergence of capitalist development and the rapid growth of an African working class. Sender and Smith argue that class formation can only be understood through gender relations - the crucial elements in the formation of a rural proletariat and significant in distinguishing between capitalist and non-capitalist accumulation strategies. Placing the internal issues of trade union rights, wages and working conditions firmly on the African political agenda, the evidence of this vigorous study is difficult to ignore.