Insurance urbanism: Building risky futures in Dar es Salaam
Author: Irmelin Joelsson (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
Keywords: Insurance, Assets, Dar es Salaam
Session 29: Private Finance in African Urban Development: Speculation, Value, Territories
Friday October 25, 10:45–12:15 & 13:45-15:15, Far West Studio, John Moffat Building
Insurance Urbanism: Building Risky Futures in Dar es Salaam
Abstract
Tanzania hosts some of Africa’s oldest and most extensive social insurance schemes, which, together with a growing private sector as well as community-based savings and insurance schemes, make up an important, yet overlooked arena for inquiry. While the insurance sector is certainly not new, the scope and scale of its operations in Africa are. In the northern hemisphere, cities are rising vertically due to the influx of insurance companies establishing new urban bases there, but little is known of the workings of insurance capital in Africa, in particular the materialisation of national social insurance in the continent’s urban metropolis beyond South Africa. In Dar es Salaam, insurance money increasingly leaves footprints, generated by insurance funds investing in large tracts of land, and pouring money into urban enclaves, infrastructure, and commercial buildings, to secure the members savings from future recessions. The Tanzanian welfare state have progressed from mutualism and cooperation to social insurance that could be marketised, partly by the state and partly by private interests. Savings that were once managed ‘privately’ through networks of mutualism are increasingly becoming a ‘public’ concern of the welfare state and a ‘private’ concern of the insurance industry. This makes up a complicated interface between what belongs to the public and private sector and how those funds and assets should better be secured. As such, this paper contributes to the critical debate on what constitutes an ‘asset’ (in Swahili, mali) in an economy where popular economies dominate.