This paper is to examine the development process of commercial tomato production in Southern Highland, Tanzania. During the past decade, Tanzanian villages have been facing rapid socioeconomic changes, especially the liberalization of the food trade in the post-socialist era. In a mountainous village in the Iringa region, the production of tomatoes as a cash crop for urban areas has advanced rapidly since the mid-1990s.
Commercially-oriented tomato production was first introduced by some wealthy farmers in the village, then adopted by other villagers as a quick yielding and profitable business. These pioneering farmers (initial introducers) produced tomatoes in larger acreages and also engaged in transportation of the products to urban areas. The psychological impact on other villagers was developed not only by the precursors, but also by one secondary introducer who had a rather moderate socioeconomic status.
By analyzing the socioeconomic backgrounds of the tomato farmers, it was revealed that they shared several social features in common such as the experience of off-farm employment (crop trade business and engaging in public services) and also migration to urban areas. The expansion process of tomato production in the study area also reflects the existing social relationships such as kinship and church fellowship. In particular, one of the precursors, a Lutheran church member and farmer/trader, was eager to recommend tomato production to fellow farmers. This may be related to the fact that the majority of tomato producers were Lutherans, and especially unmarried young males.

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This paper presents a socio-ecological analysis of the intensive agriculture practiced among the Matengo in the mountainous area of southern Tanzania. The Matengo have a land tenure system in which a patrilineal extended family holds a mountain ridge, called ntambo. They have intensified their agriculture through the combination of an indigenous farming system involving the process of “soil maturation”, and coffee cultivation which involves “tree maturation”. Although the household variation in acreage is minimal, the potential capital-intensiveness of coffee production induces a pronounced difference in household production.
The SAP policy, as it reached full implementation in the 1990s, resulted in a harsh economic environment for the Matengo Highland peasants. Most Matengo continued supplementing their indigenous farmfields with chemical fertilizer additions as they prioritized the security of subsistence food crops. However, the maintenance of the coffee trees was not overlooked. The Matengo were strategically adjusting their investment in the manure-intensive cultivation of coffee. In short, Matengo farmers were “on standby at their subsistence livelihood” in the 1990s. This shows the basic characteristic of the agricultural production and subsistence of the Matengo which encompasses a period of rapid growth in coffee production from the late 1970s. Thus, the Matengo maintained their intensive agriculture through migration to frontier areas and the customary land tenure system based on ntambo, without any excessive inclination towards land privatization and income disparity.

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In the Luo community, a widow must have a ter-relationship with her pro-husband after her husband has died. This relationship is constructed under marital union between the widow and her dead husband, because Luo do not regard the union as broken even after the husband dies.
According to a large number of past studies on the structure and function of ‘primitive societies’, the aim of this kind of practice is that the wife continues to bear children, who are counted as the children of the dead man, whoever may beget them. That approach was to analyze the mechanism of the practice in their social system. There is general conscious ness that the aim of this practice (‘levirate’ or ‘widow inheritance’ is the previous anthropological term) is to create continuity and to uphold the decease person's name, and hence his line, a critically important social practice among the Luo community.
The focus of this paper is an attempt to understand the widow's life after her husband's death. I investigated the widows' various facetted conditions through observing both their social and sexual situation. After investigating it appeared that there were various social conditions driving the ter-relationship practice.
Some of those social conditions are: the pressure put on the widow by relatives of the deceased husband and her natal clan to find a pro-husband. Second, a widow may be seen as a prostitute if she does not accept a ter-relationship because of the Luo customary norm connecting sexual rules and ethics etc. Third, the customary patriarchal Luo law of property says that there is no place where a widow can stay except her husband's land. Lastly, other pressures mounted on the widow by the jater who jealous of the widow's family, and her own son who does not want any problem concerning the jater brought to his home.
In conclusion, it is clear that widows have the freedom to choose and dismiss their pro-husband and this make this practice positive. The pro-husband can be a family member of the deceased husband's family, a neighbour, or someone from another community. It seems that because of the widow's freedom to choose and dismiss, widows are more free than they would have been with their real husbands, who in most cases watch their wife's activities at all times.

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Decentralization and ‘ethnic’ self-determination have been among the central themes of Ethiopian politics since 1991. The new constitution, established under the EPRDF government, articulates the rights of the ‘nations, nationalities and peoples’ to self-determination, including the right to secession. Under this constitution, the ‘nations, nationalities and peoples’ become the basic unit for self-government which is atomized in the form of nine States. The State government, which takes its model from the federal government, is given a considerable degree of right to self-government. However, decentralization of the government structure, when combined with its unique ethnic policy, turned out to have its own controversies.
This article discusses the current problematic situation caused by these controversies. The first part of the article reviews the ethnic and regional policies of the past regimes. The second part, which is based on interviews conducted with State government officials, discusses the outline of the structure of the State government and the administrative issues the State governments are forced to cope with. Owing to the expansion of the administrative structure and the diversification of the functions of the State government, every State is facing a serious shortage of human resources. As regards the ethnic policy, States which are composed of ‘ethnic minorities’, the best example of which is the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' State, are increasingly fragmented into smaller political segments, which is apparently a result of the policy that ‘respects the right to self-determination’.

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Eighty-three mammalian footprints and 14 bird claw footprints of bird were found in the fossil site (SH-23) in Samburu Hills, northern Kenya. The site was the part of the Namurungule formation and near SH-22 where the Miocene fossil ape named Samburupithecus kiptalami was found. The footprints were left in sand sediments and a thin silt layer covered the sediments. The extent of the sediment face was not large (8×1.5 meter). The study of footprints from the late Miocene period is rare in east Africa, and the footprints in Samburu hills were quite important. The main trackmakers of the footprints were Carnivora, Artiodactyla and Rhinocerotidae. The Namurungule mammalian fauna in Samburu Hills showed a savanna environment. However, the composition of trackmakers in SH-23 was different from the Namurungule fauna. The most popular fossils in Samburu Hills were Hipparion, Equidae, while the footprints of Hipparion were not found in SH-23. There were also no Proboscidea footprints. It seemed that most of the mammals, suer as the trackmakers in SH-23, lived near water. The clawprints of the birds looked like cranes or plovers. These kinds of birds were popular by the waterside. Therefore, SH-23 was characterized as a waterside environment.

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