Due to recent land-use change, wildlife migration through the Kilombero Valley has almost come to a standstill. In line with global restoration efforts, the African Wildlife Foundation has thus been given the task of implementing the Restoration Opportunity Assessment Methodology (ROAM), recently developed by IUCN and the World Resources Institute to foster the restoration of wildlife corridors in the area. Designed as a collaborative endeavour, it is in processes such as these that the aspirations of global restoration policies are confronted with specific local contexts. By focusing on specific situations and encounters, especially regarding the participatory aspects of the project, we illustrate how global policy aspirations are appropriated, partly contested and partly played along with, before finally turning into something of an illusion. This way, this article not only questions the more optimistic claims made for ‘conservation-as-development’, it also argues that a better understanding of the plurality of local aspirations and the ways in which they interact with the project’s goals is needed if global policy aspirations are to be realized more successfully.
In light of climate change, projected population growth, increasing conflicts over land and the question of food security, the Tanzanian government takes the respective visions of environmental futures as a cause and justification for particular measures in the here and now. One such modality through which agricultural futures in the Kilombero Valley are currently made present and decided upon is the use of the Mobile Application to Secure Tenure (MAST). Through the use of this application, on the one hand, a more capital-friendly land legislation should be developed. On the other hand, by issuing Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy (CCRO), which are supposed to offer a certain security to current land users, expected conflicts are sought to be reduced and prevented. Thus, by examining the use of MAST and the particular ways in which it renders possible futures actionable, we contribute to ongoing research that aims to illustrate how “humans [...] do not own and shape ‘their’ future alone” (Granjou et al. 2017: 8). While such technologies are generally developed and employed to increase certainty, following the implementation and effects of MAST, in particular, we will show how the specific materiality of this mobile application not only allows to secure tenure, but at the same time creates new insecurities that contribute to the complex emergence of environmental futures in this part of rural Tanzania.
Abstract. Against the backdrop of food security and supposedly untapped agricultural potential in Africa, international Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) remain important intermediaries for the transfer of agricultural science and technologies. Realizing the limited transferability of Western technologies to the Global South, they increasingly shift to trial-and-error-approaches to generate adapted innovations. In this vein, the Spatio-Temporal Agribusiness Support System (STASS) was introduced to Tanzania not only to intensify agricultural production but also to further develop the technology itself. Following Tilley's approach to „Africa as a living laboratory“, and concepts of experimentation from Science and Technology Studies (STS), this article explores the different logics and (unintended) effects of merging a development project with a technological pilot. Participant observation during the deployment of the digital drone and satellite-based information technology highlighted how experimentation for technological innovations sought to reconcile a highly complex actor network which focused primarily on data generation. Yet, through technology breakdowns and an emphasis on the interests of external experts this newly generated digital knowledge appeared to be of constrained applicability and, ultimately, pointed to the limited compatibility of testing and developing.
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