Paper short abstract:

Tanzania, like many African nations, has resumed the use of DDT in malaria control efforts. While never totally banned in the country, the resumption of its use comes as part of the adoption of a malaria control regime promoted by WHO and its Western sponsors.

Paper long abstract:

In the last two decades, deaths from malaria, a disease caused by a mosquito borne parasite, have increased and then declined in East Africa. Several factors helped cause this increase and decline. First, Plasmodium falciparum has acquired resistance to not only the first widely available treatment for malaria, chloroquine, but also to later sulfa related drugs. Second, the increase in urbanization has increased the number of people vulnerable to continuous infection, and finally, the collapse of large scale mosquito eradication programs in the 1970s. By the beginning of the current century, with a widespread international recognition of the scope of the problem, calls came for renewed use of previously banned pesticides to control mosquitoes, including the re-legalization of DDT. DDT use has become relatively widespread as part of an integrated effort to control malaria which has seen some success. This paper will examine both the international and East African contexts for such debates. It will argue that global power relationships have shaped the debate and led to widespread popular support for the use of pesticides in East Africa.