Reasons for Moving to Dar Es Salaam: Opportunities and Pitfalls

Dar es Salaam is a city of extremes. It is also one of the four cities surveyed as part of the At Risk Environmental Mobility in African Coastal Cities project in partnership with Robert Bosch Stiftung and local partners such as Slum Dwellers International.

Dar Es Salaam is one of the fastest-growing cities worldwide, and one of the most populous cities in Africa. Its metro area population has exploded since the 1980s from about one million to more than seven million today. It is Tanzania’s economic powerhouse,  a regional hub and global port city with its streets bustling with activity while at the same time reflecting the precarity that the majority of city dwellers experience.

It is estimated that almost 75% of Dar es Salaam’s residents live in informal settlements. Many of them migrated to these settlements from the country’s northern regions, though more recently migration from the greater Dar region contributed to the city’s growth. Migration started in earnest after the country’s independence. During the 1970s tumultuous politics saw the local government being effectively abolished (1972 -1982). Migratory flows have intensified amidst the policy void left during the abolishment (1972 -1982) and slow restoration of local government that ensued. A consequence of the effective absence of local government has been the creation of high density low income areas, in parallel to sprawling periurban growth due to poor land management. These two elements characterize the city’s uneven and unequal growth.

In our survey of 1,400 residents across informal settlements in Dar Es Salaam, close to a thousand respondents migrated to the city. Over 30% migrated within the larger region of Dar Es Salaam. The intra-regional migration shows the growing primacy of the city in the eastern part of the country. Outside of the greater Dar region, migration from Pwani, the northeastern region of Tanga, and Morogoro – located between the capital Dodoma and Dar Es Salaam – have contributed significantly to the city’s growth. 

A combination of limited household resources, decreasing housing affordability, and little land availability for housing in the central city have obliged migrants and long-term city residents to settle in periurban areas of the city. This is the case for approximately a third of the city’s population residing in the Lower Msimbazi Basin area. Prone to severe flooding, residents in the area experience loss of life and material damages that compromise their housing and livelihood options. A Karakata resident in one of the settlements surveyed, Yusuph Omary, began to see his neighbor’s house breaking down five years before his house was destroyed by the river flood. When he owned land and a house, there was no need to pay rent. The flood put an additional financial burden on him, because now a major part of his income goes towards rent.

There is a wide variety of reasons for migration that span along the voluntary migration and forced displacement continuum. The main reasons for moving to Dar Es Salaam were a combination of socioeconomic factors. Across regions, people moved most often to access better economic opportunities or they moved after marriage. A significant portion of respondents also considered access to better housing as a key reason for moving.

Economic opportunities have been motivating migration journeys. Migrants move to the city for searching for a job and some move after finding a job. Having access to transportation and therefore having access to work is a critical reason for moving that is often expressed in qualitative responses. In comparison to smaller cities, migrants expect higher wages, easier access to infrastructure and better economic opportunities in Dar es Salaam even though the city is 50% more expensive than the second largest city in the country, Dodoma. It also hints at the varying degrees of risks and conditions of moving that determine where in the city people settle and for what purpose. For example a sudden loss of income becomes an urgent push factor for someone to find new opportunities, settle in room within an informal settlements. While others who may plan a move and are driven by the prospect of home ownership would look for vacant plots to build their home, usually in informal settlements and then physically move.

Among social reasons, 70% of respondents reported moving because of marriage. This reflects the high levels of representation of women participating in the survey. It also hints at previous findings from gender and migration studies that underline the strong relationship between the movement of women and marriage. This raises questions as to whether marriage should be considered solely as a form of family migration or if it represents a strategy to enhance and diversify household income. Marriage is a means to access economic opportunities. Research in feminist migration studies has historically undervalued that in nations with smaller welfare states, marriage is a means for families to access unpaid domestic labor. In highly patriarchal societies marriages become a way for women to escape poverty and access economic opportunities with the trade-off of being subjected to perform domestic duties. Accessing better safety, moving for more independence and moving after divorce or separation are less frequent but important reasons that the survey was able to capture.

Various studies also suggest that housing plays a critical role in helping the middle class in developing countries build more financial assets. A Habitat for Humanity report highlights that homes serve as a place of employment for people, it can also serve as a source of rental income and an entry point into the urban economy. 60% of those who cited housing as a reason for moving in our survey said that they moved to the city because they bought their own home. Along with being a financial asset that opens up new economic opportunities, owning a home in Dar Es Salaam is a means of accessing new rights and security. People may feel less subjected to evictions having owned their own property. However, since many build homes within larger informal settlements they often find themselves in constant negotiations with redevelopment schemes that often warrant relocation. Like Yusuph, they may also be exposed to coastal flooding in low lying areas that may initiate a new cycle of economic insecurities.

According to the CORVI risk profile the greatest risk posed by climate change to Dar Es Salaam is to its economic resilience because the city generates 17% of national GDP. It is an economic center and people move to the city hinged on aspirations of economic mobility. What large scale studies like this often don’t capture are the financial, emotional and physical insecurities for a majority of the city population that live in informal settlements and are exposed to rising climate risk. Through the survey, we realize that while environmental reasons in are not top of mind reasons for why people decide to move in the first place, people do express poor infrastructure and flooding as reasons in some cases. Unknowingly, these become risk factors that people are exposed to after moving to cities coastal cities like Dar Es Salaam because they need to make a compromise on the location of their homes and therefore their direct exposure to climate change induced risk.

The survey was conducted in four coastal African cities namely; Accra, Ghana, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Freetown, Sierra Leone and Monrovia, Liberia. Dar Es Salaam being the city with the largest sample. What are the settlements studied, where are they located and what does a combination of spatial and demographic data tell us about the climate risk faced by people? These are questions we will dive into in our next blog.