Book Review Jonathan M Jackson, Visions for an African Valley: Histories of Development in Kilombero, Tanzania since 1877. London: James Currey, 2025. Pp. i-xvi, 1-270, ISBN: 9781805435525

Research on the history of colonial development and future-making in Tanzania has focused on the racial and class politics that influenced development visions and practices. Studies of postcolonial development history have demonstrated how state leaders and their ideologies shaped nation-building trajectories. Notwithstanding of the temporal dynamics, scholars have analysed how the flow of finance and technical assistance reveals intertwined global forces such as nationalism and the Cold War, and how foreign development assistance shaped development in Tanzania. Visions for an African Valley moves beyond this conventional analysis. Instead of employing ideological lenses in analysis, it specifically examines how colonial and postcolonial development actors perceived and planned for the Kilombero Valley as a specific geographical area. The choice of Kilombero as a window in exploring Tanzania’s development history is apt given that both colonial and postcolonial governments regarded the Valley as a ‘critical development zone.’