Green, Maia: "The Development State: Aid, Culture and Civil Society in Tanzania."(Book review)

• Author: Biedzynski, James

Green, Maia. The Development State: Aid, Culture and Civil Society in Tanzania. Suffolk, UK: Boydall and Brewer, 2014.

Development is a controversial topic in African studies. Many African nationalists blame European colonialism for distorting their respective economies and making them dependent on the global market. Others argue that Africa has never had a chance to develop its own economic strategy given the violence and corruption that erupted after independence. Whatever the case, one cannot understand contemporary Africa without looking at development. Maia Green, an anthropologist at the University of Manchester, provides the reader with an interesting, yet jargon-laden, account of how development has unfolded in Tanzania.

Tanzania was colonized by Germans at the end of the nineteenth century. Known as German East Africa...