Prosperity in a crisis economy: the Nyamongo gold boom, Tanzania, 1970s–1993

Nathaniel Chimhete

Journal of Eastern African Studies, 2020, vol. 14, issue 3, 572-589

Abstract: From the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, Tanzania experienced an unprecedented crisis characterized by high inflation, unemployment and the shortage of basic commodities. Interviews with contemporaries and the scanty documentary evidence available show that this crisis did not impede small-scale gold mining industry in Nyamongo, Tarime District. On the contrary, mining in Nyamongo boomed during this period, largely because the price of gold on the international market rose exponentially during this period. In the inflationary environment of Tanzania in the 1970s and 1980s, gold not only acted as a hedge against inflation; it also enabled small miners to have access to foreign currency and basic commodities that were in short supply in the country. But the gold riches of Nyamongo remained largely “local” because the gold economy developed as a clan-based enclave economy with few linkages to the national economy.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1080/17531055.2020.1774706

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