The 1967 Arusha Declaration set out ujamaa, Nyerere's programme of rural socialism, under which Tanzanians were to move into cooperative villages. Voluntary uptake was low: Britannica notes that Nyerere's exhortations did not produce the enthusiasm he hoped for and that individuals resisted collectivization. From 1973 the government made relocation compulsory, and during Operation Vijiji in 1973–76 more than five million people were moved into some 8,000 registered villages. The campaign is described in the scholarly literature as one of the largest social engineering exercises in postcolonial Africa; it involved the abandonment of dispersed homesteads and established farming systems, and studies of specific districts document ecological and agricultural damage. Agricultural output fell and Britannica records that the cooperative village scheme failed, adding pressure to an already weak economy. There was no mass mortality associated with the programme.
Tanzania's government under Julius Nyerere moved scattered rural households into planned villages, with party cadres, police and army enforcing relocation in the compulsory phase
The 1967 census counted 12.3 million people in mainland Tanzania and the 1978 census 17.5 million, giving roughly 15 million in 1973 with about 85-90 per cent rural. Party figures claimed that by 1976 some 13 million people were living in registered villages, of whom about 5 million had been moved during the compulsory phase of 1973-76.
There was no significant death toll. Villagization was carried out without mass killing; its documented harms were the loss of houses, standing crops and established farming systems, food shortages in some districts and long-term ecological damage around the new settlements. No study attributes excess mortality to the programme at a scale that can be quantified.
Tanzania