The number of people living in Tanzania’s rural areas has traditionally outweighed those in towns and cities – but this is quickly changing. Tanzania’s urban population is rapidly increasing and, with it, the number of slums. Already, a staggering 92 per cent of the urban population live in slums (UN-Habitat) and the number of slums in the country is increasingly annually at one of the highest rates in sub-Saharan Africa (more than 6 per cent per year).
Along with other African countries such as Malawi, Zambia and Ghana, Tanzania already has high slum proportions and faces rapid and sustained slum growth. It requires immediate action to slow down or reverse these trends (UN-Habitat).
Slum dwellers face complex difficulties, including a constant threat to health due to a lack of adequate sanitation and unclean water. According to DFID, in 2008, access to water reached only 78 per cent of people in urban areas and just 56 per cent in rural areas in Tanzania. Millions of slum dwellers live on hazardous sites, prone to natural disasters or are located near to toxic areas, such as landfill or factories.
Where the proportion of slum households is high, child mortality rates are typically also high. In urban slums in Tanzania, around 150 infants per 1,000 births are estimated to die before the age of five; in urban non-slum areas, this figure is more than halved to 70 infants in every 1,000 births.
Homeless International’s partner in Tanzania is the Centre for Community Initiatives (CCI). CCI is working with the Tanzania Federation of the Urban Poor to develop community savings and credit groups in Dar es Salaam, Arusha, Dodoma and Musoma. These groups act as the basis for communities to plan and negotiate slum improvement schemes, helping them to tackle the problems associated with living in slums. The Tanzanian federation currently has about 5,000 members in 82 savings groups in these areas.
To learn more about Homeless International’s work with CCI, please click on the links below.
