Sailing the Seas, Navigating Bureaucracy: The Yugoslav Experience in Industrial Cooperation with Tanzania

• In Event: Memory and Identity of Yugoslavia’s Nonalignment

Abstract

Dredging the depths of active post-socialist amnesia, this paper draws on a range of archival sources and oral history interviews to examine the case of Trallco, a trailer assembly plant near Dar es Salaam established in the early 1980s. Conceived as a model of progressive economic cooperation, this Tanzanian-Yugoslav project soon faced the harsh realities of the 1980s economic and debt crises in both countries. Highlighting the distinct Yugoslav approach compared to Western managerial practices, while acknowledging the precarious repercussions of industrial development on Tanzanian society, the Trallco testimony opens a discussion on post-colonial economic transition in Africa and the role of foreign assistance in this challenging endeavor.

Author

• Jure Ramsak, Science and Research Centre of Koper (Slovenia)