"A showcase for experiments": Local government reforms in colonial Tanzania, 1940s and 1950s

This article attempts to historicise the current debates about decentralisation and "good local government" on the basis of a concrete example. It focuses on local government reforms in two areas (Sukumaland, Kilimanjaro) in late colonial Tanzania. In the 1940s and 1950s, the then British colonies in Africa experienced a wave of local government reforms, intended as steps towards political modernisation and more effective rule. The late colonial period, characterised by permanent experiments and considerable amorphousness on the part of the British colonial rulers, can be seen as the first phase of a process which started in the 1940s, continued after independence and is still relevant today. This process is influenced by ongoing but often inconsistent and rapidly changing efforts towards decentralisation on the part of the rulers. Since the late 1940s, the local population in various areas of Tanzania had to realise that despite different rulers, programs, concepts, labels and ideological justifications, local government was never really autonomous but always remained the extended arm of the central government. The conflicts between nominal participation in self-government and administrative control "from above" were never solved.