Photographs by Joanna Lipper
TABLE OF CONTENTS Growth vs Stagnation Historic and Economic Context Photographer s Statement by Joanna Lipper Joanna Lipper s Cross Cultural Collaboration with the Seaweed Center
Growth vs. Stagnation Joanna Lipper traveled to Zanzibar in the summer of 2009 to photograph women in both urban and rural settings. While in Zanzibar, Joanna Lipper visited Jambiani, a rural village on the east coast of Unguja where some women work as Seaweed Farmers. Zanzibar lacks the large- scale infrastructure and hardware needed to process seaweed and extract valuable algae. Therefore the raw materials are shipped abroad for processing. Without microfinance loans, improved education, and community organization amongst laborers, there can be no further growth for seaweed farming as a cash- generating economically empowering occupation for rural village women and this form of labor runs the risk of becoming obsolete in Zanzibar. Today, women who live in rural villages are especially vulnerable as they are particularly isolated with very few educational and professional opportunities available to them. A significant number of these women are illiterate and live without access to the internet islanders in the truest sense of the word.
Historic and Economic Context Zanzibar is an archipelago in East Africa, encompassing the islands of Unguja and Pemba, both situated in the Indian Ocean off the coast of mainland Tanzania. Zanzibar has a population of roughly one million people. The average wage is less than $1 a day. Swahili is the main language spoken by inhabitants followed by Arabic and English. Islam came to Zanzibar in the 10th century with the early Shirazi settlers from Persia and today Zanzibar is more than 99% Muslim. Women in Zanzibar trace their lineage back to Swahili, Arab, Indian, Goan, Shirazi, African, Persian, Portuguese, British and Omani origins. Economic forces including international trade, slavery, imperialism, revolution and socialism have historically been fundamental components of Zanzibar s tumultuous, fascinating evolution into one of the most cosmopolitan regions in Africa. Over the past century, while many industrialized countries experienced economic growth as a result of advances in manufacturing and technology and vast improvements in gender equity and infrastructure, Zanzibar, once a formidable international trading port of almost mythical proportions experienced a sharp economic decline. During the 18 th and 19th Centuries, while under the rule of the Omani Sultanate, Zanzibar grew to become a leading producer of cloves, a precious spice, highly valued for its flavoring and medicinal healing properties. The economic success of these Arab- owned clove plantations depended on a steady supply of slave labor imported by the Arabs from the interior of the African continent. Zanzibar rapidly became the center of the lucrative East African Slave Trade as many slaves were exported to destinations all over the Arab world. Slavery was finally abolished in Zanzibar in 1873 following a strong anti- slavery crusade spearheaded by Anglican, David Livingstone. In the absence of slavery, the production of cloves severely diminished. Subsequently, Zanzibar was unable to sustain significant economic growth. After the revolution of 1963, Zanzibar came under the rule of the socialist African Nationalist Party and was subjected to international embargoes, causing food shortages. Economic growth slowed to a halt. During this period of stagnation some foreigners referred to Zanzibar as The Cuba of East Africa. These historical forces and political changes resulted in the islands becoming increasingly cut off from the highly competitive global economy.
Photographer s Statement by Joanna Lipper When I photographed seaweed farmers in Zanzibar, the direct contact between their hands, the water and the seaweed, brought to mind timeless images of women laborers in paintings like Millet s 'The Gleaners' and Van Gogh's 'Two Peasant Women Digging.' There is something sublime about the way in which the two seaweed farmers looking outwards towards the horizon line seem so distant, detached and protected from the technology and architecture of modern life. In Zanzibar, seaweed farming is a sustainable form of aquaculture and a rare source of cash income for women in rural villages. Illiterate and marginalized, the two women in my photographs were frustrated that prices for their dried seaweed had been steadily declining. They felt the work was almost no longer worth their time. One major problem is the absence of infrastructure and hardware needed to process the crops and extract the valuable algae. Dependent on a limited pool of brokers who have a monopoly on export, women seaweed farmers are routinely exploited. As Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn have noted, in many poor countries, the greatest unexploited resource isn t oil fields or veins of gold; it is the women and girls who aren t educated and never become a major presence in the formal economy. On a global level, the import and export of seaweed is a $200 billion business. The United States alone imports nearly $50 billion annually. Algae extracts are widely used in processed dairy, meat, and fruit products, in cosmetics, in paint, toothpaste, air fresheners, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals and in green biofuels being developed to revolutionize transportation and mitigate global warming. Currently, large multinational corporations like Exxon are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development geared towards genetically engineering synthetic strains of algae capable of absorbing huge amounts of carbon dioxide like that emitted by power plants, The Tanzanian government has developed a strategic plan to expand seaweed farming in Zanzibar. But without microfinance loans, improved education, new technology, processing infrastructure and community organization amongst laborers, there can be no further growth for this occupation that empowers women in rural villages. Disconnected from new technology and exploited by local brokers who are their sole connection to the outside world, the seaweed farmers in Zanzibar and the form of aquaculture they practice risk becoming obsolete. The thin thread that connects them to the global economy grows more fragile by the day.
Joanna Lipper s Cross- Cultural Collaboration With The Seaweed Center The Seaweed Center in Zanzibar is a collaborative project between students at the Chalmers School of Entrepreneurship in Gothenburg, Sweden, the School of Intellectual Capital Management and the Rylanderska Foundation, also both in Sweden, the Zanzibar Adventure School, Dar es Salaam University in Tanzania, and the local women from the village of Paje in Zanzibar. After seeing an online exhibition of Joanna Lipper s Seaweed Farmers Series on SocialDocumentary.net, M.Sc student Sebastian Palmgren reached out on behalf of the group and initiated collaboration with the photographer. The students in Sweden are working to organize exhibitions of Joanna Lipper s Seaweed Farmers Series at museums and galleries in Europe in an effort to raise awareness and inspire social activism through public engagement with art. The Seaweed Center in Zanzibar is a social entrepreneurship project that aims to improve the livelihood of the local women, by providing them with sustainable means of creating a higher value- added product from seaweed. The community of seaweed farmers in Paje consists of around 450 women, who earn an average income of less than US$ 1 per day harvesting and selling dried seaweed. The reasons for the women s alarming living conditions have been the lack of tools and facilities for the proper harvesting and treatment of the seaweed. Currently, once the seaweed is harvested, they have to dry it and store in their homes under very poor conditions and limitations. There s no possibility for them to create any higher value of the seaweed but only selling it as raw material at very low prices. As a way to improve the livelihood of the women seaweed farmers in Paje our aim is to build a factory facility, where all of the 450 local women can produce a variety of products from seaweed, such as soap, shampoo and manure. This would increase their economic independence, and at the same time, hopefully reduce gender inequalities in Zanzibar.