The importance of mutual assistance and family “care” in the broad sense has been discussed as important in Africa, but its contribution on child survival has not been given attention. This article analyzed factors influencing child death based on questionnaire interviews in three villages with different characteristics in formerly high U5MR regions. As a result, firstly, “care” analyzed by number of family members and women were negatively correlated to children's death, indicating its effectiveness for child survival in Zanzibar, but not in an agro-pastoral village. Secondly, “being able to eat at relatives when lacking food” had a tendency to be beneficial to child survival in two mainland villages with food shortages. However, this mutual assistance was not comprehensive, and food distribution function was ineffective. Thirdly, mothers who received money for children's medicine experienced children's death, indicating ineffectiveness of monetary mutual assistance for medicine. Furthermore, monetary mutual assistance differed among villages: money for food in Swahili villages, and health facility fee in agro-pastoral village were more frequent respectively. As conclusion, mutual food assistance do contribute to infant and child survival. However, this was not comprehensive for the whole village, and substantive number of children were outside of food sharing, increasing their risk of death.

The Hadza hunter-gatherers who live in close proximity to Lake Eyasi in Northern Tanzania have engaged in tourism since the 1990s, in part of their settlement area. Tourists visit the Hadza camps to witness their life based on hunting-gathering and they go hunting with the Hadza men, try shooting arrows, enjoy the Hadza dance, and finally purchase hand-made souvenirs. In this article, I expect to discuss how the Hadza survive through tourism, based on the analyses of their relationship with neighbours, individual mobility and cash income from selling souvenirs. In some previous researches, the Hadza tourism has been considered to cause negative impacts for the Hadza. However, cash income through tourism can bring a small change on the relationship between the Hadza and their neithbours. Also, they often and individually move their camps and this frequent movement results in the possibility of flexible joining and escaping from tourism. Although they can individually earn money from selling their hand-made souvenirs such as bead accessories, and bows and arrows, their income significantly vary between individuals. However, they use their income to purchase alcohol or tobacco and share it among themselves. In Hadza tourism, the Hadza can select their way of connection with tourism in initiative. In the future, it is important to keep their land for continuing current mobile life with tourism.

Since large-scale development projects began in the year 2000, a major cultural tourist spot geared to accept mass tourism was formed in southwest Ethiopia. This paper aims to clarify the process by which ethnocultural tourist spots are formed and turned into tourism resources. The paper focuses on the conduct and relationships of actors in the host country who commercialized part of their own lives to respond to the needs of foreign tourists expecting encounters with ethnic groups living in remote areas. The results of the study show how agro-pastoralists, who have long been involved in tourism in this area, and guides of other ethnic groups along with the Ari agriculturalists are newly entering the tourism industry. These people are strongly involved in the development and presentation of tourism resources, gaining a degree of economic benefit from these activities and prompting exploration of possible measures to involve them in communities. Forming new networks through tourism has created opportunities for local residents to participate more autonomously. Thus far, it appears that tourism has been effectively adopted as a side business, with agricultural and livestock farming remaining key. On the other hand, there is also a danger that the land exploitation associated with state development projects could negatively influence the tourism industry in this region and these people's main livelihood.

Participation in the tourism industry has recently emerged as way to empower and reduce the poverty of ethnic minority communities. For example, opportunities related to “Bushman/San Tourism” are now available in southern Africa. This paper explores the social and economic effects of “Bushman Tourism” on the relationships between the San and their powerful neighbouring group, “local whites”, and among the San communities themselves in Ghanzi and its surrounding area, Botswana. The San earn relatively high incomes from tourism and retain central control of the style of tourism-related activities, while most of the lodging for tourists is owned by “local whites”. At the same time, many San individuals working in the tourism industry as their second, part-time jobs, rather than full-time ones. In this way, they have been able to share in the limited tourism-related job opportunities and avoid the widening economic disparities within the San community. In this context, “Bushman Tourism” currently faces a dilemma: although “local whites” have played important roles in the commercial success of the tourism industry, they have also contributed to the maintenance of the unequal relationship between themselves and the San. In addition, the San approach to work is sometimes incompatible with the goals of increasing both their earnings from, and their decision-making authority regarding, the tourism industry.

Locals living near Game Reserves and National Parks in Kenya are participating and developing ethnic tourism by establishing “cultural villages” on their own initiative. Especially among the famous “Maasai” people, who typically represent the target of the “tourist gaze,” being involved in tourism is considered an important form of economic activity. In this paper, I will indicate the vulnerability of ethnic tourism as an economic base for locals by presenting several cases.

Most “cultural villages” provide similar attractions such as welcoming songs by the women and traditional jumping dance by the unmarried males. Among the village's in my survey, some villages follow a different strategy and provide a unique “performance.” One village's membership is restricted to women, and they narrate their life stories to the tourists. Their stories characterize the typical predicaments of African women － domestic violence, forced marriage at a young age, early pregnancy, dropping-out of school, etc., and describe how they came to find refuge at the village. Another village provide children's stories how they are facing difficulties to earn their school fees. Those stories are sometimes associated with seeking aid and they receive a remarkable amount of money. In this paper, I will illustrate this current phenomenon as a new trend of strategy in “Maasai” ethnic tourism.

Because of abundant wildlife and the scenic view of Mt. Kilimanjaro, Amboseli area in southern Kenya has been the major destination of international tourists in Africa, and numbers of “community-based” projects have been implemented for the past half a century. In 2000s, an international NGO started the “tourism conservation enterprise” project, and several scholars studied it as a type of neoliberal “conservation-development-tourism nexus.” Based on field researches, this article reveals the fact that as the preceding studies focused on an institutional dimension of the project, they discussed the issue from the assumption that every project would aim to realize the goal of “conservation-development-tourism nexus,” tourism facilities would be constructed in every protected area, and local people would observe to a contract. Consequently, they overlooked the discrepancy between the discourse and the practice of the aid project, and the attitude of the local people which went against the neoliberal institution. The local people regard tourism as one choice of livelihoods, and whether they adopt it or not depends on the situation and the needs. In other words, tourism is not a panacea but a “supplement” to the local people. It does not solve all problems at once, but by pick and choose from among various alternatives with consideration, it supports their healthy condition.

Since the 2000s, Tanzania has been establishing Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) by implementing new wildlife policy. This policy follows the principles of Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) as a means of reducing poverty in rural communities through delegation of authority and tourism benefit sharing. WMA is an area of communal land set aside exclusively by member villages as a habitat for wildlife. As of 2017, there are 17 WMAs established, consisting of 148 villages and 440,000 of residents in total.

This paper examines what kind of impact has been brought about by WMA on member villages in the last 10 years since its establishment. The research was conducted in IKONA WMA adjacent to Serengeti National Park, northern Tanzania. IKONA is considered as the best practice among WMAs because of its extra bigger income amounting to US$500,000 in 2012. However, despite the continuous annual increase of the income, this study found out some challenges in IKONA, especially 1) lengthy and costly establishment process, 2) reduction of tourism benefit, 3) vulnerable governance, and 4) difficulty of changing the land use plan. As the consequence of these challenges, I argue that a WMA works as a tool of land grabbing.

The rapid depletion of African rainforests and loss of wildlife, such as great apes, is a serious issue today. Ecotourism is one approach that is expected to solve this problem by integrating environmental conservation and development. However, ecotourism development projects that lack sufficient understanding of local social contexts may marginalize local people and even impact conservation negatively. To discuss efficient community-based ecotourism, namely that which takes local issues into consideration, the authors focus on the research activities and an ecotourism project in a Gabonese national park.

This article describes the research process, based mainly on studies of great apes, and an ecotourism project that the authors have been conducting. The results show that (1) cooperative relationships and mutual understanding of local people, cultivated during the course of the research, contribute to establishing acceptance of ecotourism within the community, and (2) based on the cooperative relationships, changes in local perceptions and attitudes towards conservation are reinforced through ecotourism projects that allow collaboration between several external actors. It is important that all stakeholders, including local people, work together to establish a community basis for developing ecotourism.