Mobile Phones: The New Talking Drums of Everyday Africa

5. Trading places in Tanzania: Mobility and marginalization at a time of travel-saving technologies

5 Trading places in Tanzania: Mobility and marginalization at a time of travel-saving technologies Thomas Molony Introduction This chapter explores everyday socio-economic interaction at a time of travel-saving technologies and looks at the use of mobile phones among workers in Tanzania’s domestic tomato and potato trade. The business communication of Kamwene Sanga, a trader based at Dar es Salaam’s Kariakoo municipal market, is used as a case study. However, as a wholesaler, he is unusual because he does not have a mobile phone. The emphasis in this chapter is on the centrality of mobility in dealings between farmers in isolated rural communities and wholesale buyers like Kamwene, and it is suggested that mobile phones play a minor role in sustaining a working relationship between the two. For some of the most successful and respected wholesale buyers, interactions with their rural suppliers are as much social as they are economic and this type of interaction appears to rely more on face-to-face communication that cannot be substituted for by distance technologies such as the mobile phone. The chapter also shows how others on the ‘mobile margins’, who potentially seek to benefit tremendously from easier communication with their TRADING PLACES IN TANZANIA 93 urban buyers, are in little position but to maintain their old, pre-mobile-phone methods of interaction. The chapter starts by explaining the importance of agriculture to many Tanzanians and states the case for looking at perishable foodstuffs in this context. The methods of data collection are then briefly outlined and this is followed by a short sketch of the typographies of the market actors, along with a summary of the advantages mobile phones bring to agricultural trading. The reactions of some people on these mobile margins to their infrastructural marginality and constraints on market access are discussed using what are termed here as ‘network reception spots’. The analysis then turns to Kamwene, the successful buyer at Tanzania’s trading (and communications) epicentre who travels widely and has gained notoriety for his refusal to use a mobile phone. Agriculture and mobile phones in Tanzania Agriculture is Tanzania’s most important economic activity and is the country’s largest employer of labour, providing a livelihood for some 80% of the economically active population and making the largest contribution (45.3%) of any sector to GDP in 2006 (World Bank 2007). The country’s economy is thus predominantly based in the rural areas where about 70% of the Tanzanian population lives (World Bank 2004) and where the extent and severity of poverty is greatest. Tanzania’s rural population is however growing more slowly at 1.33% than the 5.06% growth rate among the urban population (UN-Habitat 2002). Urban residents buy most of the remaining half of the total agricultural output that is not consumed by subsistence farming at domestic urban food markets, where the urban poor spend well over two-thirds of their income (World Bank 1999). Added to this growth is the massive influx of migrants to cities such as Dar es Salaam, which is growing at an annual rate of 5.4% (UN-Habitat 2004) and is placing pressure on food supplies. This further calls for a greater understanding of the role of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the marketing systems that direct the production and distribute output to the main points of consumption to ensure that Tanzania’s burgeoning urban population, which accounts for 25% of the country’s total population (UNFPA 2007)), can buy affordable food. An understanding of domestic foodmarketing systems is important here because of agriculture’s role in feeding into the industrial and commercial sectors that rely upon agriculture as a source of raw materials and as a market for manufactured goods (Crawford 1997). The functioning of food-marketing systems therefore has considerable impact on both the livelihoods of rural producers and, at a time of rapid urbanization and increasing levels of urban poverty, is also a serious issue in urban development. Despite this, research on agrofood systems has mainly concentrated on exports of produce (Lyon 2003: 12), 94 THOMAS MOLONY which runs the risk of ignoring the politically strategic importance of basic food entitlements at the domestic level as ‘part and parcel of every Tanzania’s birthright’ (Bryceson 1993: 4). Locating the mobile Perishables were chosen over more staple grains such as rice and maize as the focus in this...