‘Off to Sugar Valley’: the Kilombero Settlement Scheme and ‘Nyerere's People’, 1959–69

Despite colonial echoes, settlement schemes represent a major element in ‘nation-building’ endeavours Tanzania's history. Their evolution through the 1960s was circuitous and haphazard. This article explores origins of one earliest linked to Julius Nyerere TANU: Kilombero Settlement Scheme (KSS). It traces its from 1959 ragged progress over subsequent decade before eventual transmutation under Ujamaa. personally promoted KSS basic premise sending unemployed men cities uncleared countryside grow sugar cane for sale local factory. The scheme's extended trajectory reveals palimpsestic nature history layered by different approaches reorganisation rural life Tanzania. an embryonic testing ground, both terms politics resettlement funding development projects this kind. For surviving settlers, they were ‘Nyerere's People’ as ideologies met practical realities. flawed but resilient. failures more than successes, it became important model programme social understanding challenges transformation.