Infanticide: A Survival Strategy among the Gweno People during the Early Colonial Period in Tanganyika

Traditions and customs carry socio-cultural and economic values of the community where they are practised. Infanticide was a traditional practice among the Gweno people in Kilimanjaro, northern Tanzania. This practice had socio-cultural, political, and economic significance which persisted. As a global phenomenon, infanticide has attracted enormous scholarship from different disciplines covering mostly its practice, its associated beliefs, and its eradication campaigns. Despite the popularity of infanticide practices among the Gweno people, particularly during the early colonial period, little has been revealed and documented on how it was practised, associated beliefs and the socio-cultural, political, and economic significance it carried in this community. Benefitting from research findings collected in 2015 through historical and ethnological methods such as oral traditions, interviews, archival materials, and anthropological accounts, this paper uncovers the socio-cultural, political, and economic grounds of infanticide practices among the Gweno people. The paper is built on the argument that infanticide practices served as cultural, socio-political, and economic survival strategy of the Gweno people.