Paper short abstract:

Attempts to understand and control African trypanosomiasis are bound up in the longue durée of African development. This paper examines the varied institutional structures of late-colonial Africa with a view to describe a foundation upon which later interdisciplinary research structures were formed.

Paper long abstract:

Attempts to understand and control African trypanosomiasis are bound up in the longue durée of African development, encompassing the entire twentieth century. The historical scholarship on African trypanosomiasis has set the extension of Western science, medicine and power in Africa during the early colonial period amongst the changing theories of disease aetiology, control and treatment. This paper builds upon this work to examine the latter twentieth century, when increased funds for 'development' brought a renewed emphasis on tropical disease prevention and control activities, including the expansion and reorganisation of research capacity. Over these years, Trypanosomiasis research and control has been approached from a multitude of different perspectives, including vaccine research, environmental m! anagement, vector control, human and veterinary medicine (i.e. prophyl axis or treatments) and insecticides. All of these approaches had political, economic and environmental dimensions to them that pertain in distinct, yet linked, ways from the late colonial period through independence. Scientific and medical research into the many facets of sleeping sickness continued through the political transitions while also witnessing changes to the institutional and funding regimes for vector-borne tropical diseases (and specifically zoonoses) more generally. This paper will transit the varied institutional structures of late-colonial Africa directed at the sleeping sickness problem with a view to describe a foundation upon which, or in spite of, later interdisciplinary research structures were formed.