Episode #5. ‘Kura ni alama ya maendeleo’ (‘Voting is a symbol of development’): Promising development in Zanzibar through poster-intensive campaigning
Marie-Aude FOUÉRÉ & Nicodemus MINDE, “Episode #5. ‘Kura ni alama ya maendeleo’ (‘Voting is a symbol of development’): Promising development in Zanzibar through poster-intensive campaigning” Mambo! no. 110, 2026
In Zanzibar’s 2025 elections, maendeleo did not merely signify ‘development’—it functioned as a political technology through which the CCM (Chama cha Mapinduzi, or Party of the Revolution) sought to transform infrastructure into political legitimacy and voting into an act of allegiance rather than choice. Like any notion, and even more so in the case of a notion which, throughout Tanzania (including Zanzibar), bears the weight of colonial and post-colonial history, maendeleo has multiple and contextual meanings.[1] As argued by Koponen (2018), “it is this ambiguity where the concept derives its power from. While everybody can agree on its significance, many things can be accommodated under its umbrella”. So, what did maendeleo mean to the CCM during the 2025 election year?[2] Or, to be more precise, how did the CCM seek to convince Tanzanian voters of what is meant by maendeleo, as well as to make it possible for them to embrace the idea that this particular sort of maendeleo (rather than any other) would be good for them—which would lead them to cast their vote for the CCM and its candidates? More generally, what role does maendeleo play in the CCM’s ever-renewed quest for political hegemony in Tanzania, and in Zanzibar specifically?
This fifth and last episode of this series on Tanzania’s 2025 general elections focuses on maendeleo as a political technology through a close-reading of one CCM campaign billboard in Zanzibar.[3] Campaign posters, banners and billboards, of all sizes, which filled the public space across Zanzibar in 2025, are tangible political objects that are highly relevant for examining the complex intersections between political messaging, discourse, materiality and imagery that shape the concept of and metalanguage of maendeleo during election periods, with the aim of giving it a univocal and appealing meaning. These campaign posters promote and embody maendeleo by giving it a tangible and legible face that everyone should be able to understand: they mainly show infrastructure like roads, ports and airports, hospitals and schools, and occasionally large shopping centres. Through the slogans they use, among them of “Kura ni alama ya maendeleo” (‘Voting is a symbol of development’), posters also voice a civic obligation and a moral statement. However, does maendeleo, as promoted by the CCM, resonate with the visions and expectations of today’s citizens? And can the thousands of billboards saturating the public space, with their images and slogans, succeed in convincing Zanzibaris that, this time at last, the ruling party will fulfil the promises it has so far only poorly kept?
Zanzibar’s ‘Kura ni alama ya maendeleo’ campaign billboards
A few kilometres from Pemba Airport, at a road junction cutting through a working-class neighbourhood, a large campaign billboard offers a striking visual condensation of maendeleo. The electoral poster shows us a light blue building, whose architecture is inspired by the Arab-Swahili style characteristic of the Zanzibar archipelago: it is the Kinyasini District Hospital in northern Pemba, officially opened in November 2023 during the term of office of Zanzibar’s President, Hussein Ali Mwinyi. His close-up face appears in the foreground of the poster, on the right corner. The houses besides the billboard consist of humble residential houses built of breeze blocks, covered with corrugated iron sheets, separated from one another by narrow, dirt-track alleys. Small terraces in front of the front doors and baraza—concrete benches attached to the façades facing the alleys—are typically used by residents as spaces for rest and neighbourly socializing. A scooter, the vehicle of choice for Zanzibar’s middle working classes, is parked beneath the noticeboard.

The ‘Kura ni alama ya maendeleo’ electoral poster showing the new Kinyasini hospital, opened in Pemba at the end of 2023 © photograph by Ania Gruca, October 2025
As a picture does not speak for itself, the poster includes written text to provide context for its interpretation. These words are, first and foremost, the slogan ‘Kura ni alama ya maendeleo’ (‘Voting is a symbol of development’), which reinforces the idea that only the re-election of the CCM to power, through the mobilisation of every voter on polling day (29 October), can guarantee the future provision of these basic public services. These words echo the other major economic growth slogans and narratives used by the CCM during the 2025 campaign such as, ‘Kazi na Utu’ (‘Work and dignity’), ‘Kazi Iendelee’ (‘Let the work continue’), and ‘Oktoba Tunatiki’ (‘In October, we will tick [vote]’), which emphasise voting as a ritualised act rather than as a democratic procedure and a civic responsibility enabling the expression of different political visions.[4] On the poster, the slogan is also accompanied by a call to choose the CCM and its presidential candidate, Hussein Ali Mwinyi (Chagua CCM, Chagua Dkt. Hussein Ali Mwinyi). There is no ambiguity in the message. The promised maendeleo is not presented as a product of governance but personified in a political party (the CCM) and an individual (the President of Zanzibar) imagined as the central purveyor of provision.
One can say, however, that the motif of maendeleo, as promoted by this poster and so many others posters during the intense 2025 election campaign, does not, strictly speaking, form part of a political party’s political or economic programme: providing a nation’s citizens with basic social services (in particular education, healthcare, transport infrastructure, as well as security and justice) is the raison d’être of the state and therefore falls within its primary responsibilities, at least in a democratic context, regardless of which political party or coalition is in power. But in a country such as Tanzania, where political life has been dominated since independence by a ‘party-state’—that is, by a centralised apparatus in which state structures and the CCM party are so intertwined that, despite the regular holding of multiparty elections since 1995, it is in fact a one-party system (Makulilo 2008) coupled with competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky & Way 2010; Morse 2014—this blurring of the lines between what falls under the responsibilities of the state and what falls under those of a party comes as no surprise.
Building infrastructure vs empowering citizens
Population growth does not explain by itself the need for new schools or hospitals; what also explains it is the failure of the state—whether the Union government or the Zanzibar government—to fully fulfil its sovereign duties and bring to life its democratic vision for the nation. Academic research on political life and the political economy of Tanzania has demonstrated, for several years now, that the prevailing patterns of economic exploitation, coupled with increased authoritarianism since 2015, have served to enrich the existing political and economic elites on the one hand, whilst penalising ordinary citizens on the other, as basic public services have been largely neglected (Gray 2015). The construction of educational and healthcare infrastructure, when it does take place, is not always accompanied by the appointment of adequately trained staff able to fulfil their duties to the best of their ability.
In the years following the adoption of socialism, the first president of independent Tanzania, Julius K. Nyerere, repeatedly maintained that there could be no true independence—that is, national, popular and individual sovereignty—without maendeleo (Nyerere 1973, see also Hunter 2015; Ahearne 2016). But maendeleo was not just about building schools and hospitals, installing electricity and water networks, or using tractors and fertiliser: all these tangible things were merely the means—necessary but not sufficient—of what he called the development of the people (maendeleo ya watu), that is to say, of the body and mind of women and men: being educated to understand the complexity of the world, but also to succeed in one’s chosen profession, and more broadly, one’s life and ambitions, as well as being in good health and having enough to eat, and a healthy food, not to be too much constrained by one’s physical condition. Even though ‘self-help schemes’ and ‘participatory development’ were high on the agenda, a top-down approach was the rule in a country where a fatherlike vision of the state prevailed, the state acting as the ultimate provider (Green 2012; Mercer 2002). Since the first multiparty elections in 1995, CCM has used the vocabulary maendeleo as a continuous tactic of translating incumbency into legitimacy. In 1995 for example, maendeleo was framed as managed reform—transitioning to market economy. In the 2010-2015 CCM manifesto, maendeleo was framed as agriculture, infrastructure, planning, and measurable delivery. These became the party’s policy actions meant to spur maendeleo (Nguyahambi et al. 2019). In 2020, CCM’s maendeleo discourse became heavily performative: roads, railways, energy projects, free education, and visible infrastructure were used as evidence of rule.
In Zanzibar specifically—where semi-autonomous status within the United Republic of Tanzania afforded the government and the House of Representatives considerable leeway in terms of economic and social policies—, the promises of maendeleo had been promises of ‘modernisation’ against a backdrop of historical neglect, injustices and pronounced hierarchies of race and status. The party-state slogan of “the fruits of the Revolution” (matunda ya Mapinduzi) has been used to identify such ‘modern’ changes. Under President Abeid Amani Karume, maendeleo referred in particular to the industrialisation of the archipelago, agricultural growth and the construction of modern, East German-designed blocks of public housing with running water, gas and electricity—exemplified by the housing estate in the Michenzani neighbourhood (Myers 1994; De Nijs, 2013). Improvement made its ways to the villages, too, with diesel generators, water pumps, and television sets (Winther 2008). In some present-day memories, the revolutionary regime in Zanzibar stands for stability, broad provision of social services, housing, work, and good wages (Bissell 2005). Yet, academic works shed light on the degraded economic situation of the 1970s and 1980s, while the elite enriched itself (Roberts 2016). This predatory politics in which “political thuggery was a virtue” (Othman 1995, 175) has persisted until now (Cameron 2018). And maendeleo as modernity still prevails among the political and economic elite ruling the state, now standing for glass-tainted high buildings, residential gated communities, large shopping malls and flyovers. In the 2025 CCM manifesto, Zanzibar’s presidential candidate and incumbent President Hussein Mwinyi concluded his pitch to the people of Zanzibar saying:
Kwa heshima kubwa, naahidi kwamba, nitaongeza kasi ya maendeleo kwa kuimarisha vyanzo vya mapato, kukuza uchumi wa Zanzibar, na kuhakikisha wananchi wote wananufaika na huduma bora za jamii. [With great honor, I promise that I will accelerate development by strengthening sources of revenue, growing Zanzibar’s economy, and ensuring that all citizens benefit from quality social services]
Rallying voters through poster-intensive campaigning?
In 2005, as in previous elections, the CCM relied heavily on visual communication through electoral posters displayed on walls throughout the towns and villages of Zanzibar, as well as on placards and billboards. The whole country was decked out in green and yellow, the party’s colours. The ruling party’s campaign, seeking re-election, was well-funded. In August 2025, a few months before the elections, the CCM had run a fundraising campaign that raised over 86 billion Tanzanian shillings (approximately 32 million US dollars) (Wambura 2025), with significant contributions from the private and mining sectors—a sign of the close ties linking elite networks within the state-party apparatus (Gray 2015; Morse 2019). These visual communication elements were accompanied by political rallies during which all sorts of election merchandise were sold or distributed: khanga (pieces of printed fabric for women), T-shirts, caps, handbags and tote bags, etc. This monetised merchandise was tailored to gendered preferences, with khanga, dresses or headscarves for women and T-shirts and caps for men. It also targeted voters on a tight budget: a whole range of items were sold at a low price, such as pins or badges. In a country where campaign rallies are the norm (Paget 2019, 2024), one must consider visual communication, electoral materials and rallies together as performances of power through which the state-party seeks to canvass voters.
As a tool for political mobilisation, electoral posters, like advertising posters, owe their “aggressive effectiveness” (Sontag 1970) to the predominance of images over text and to their permanence, being displayed for weeks, sometimes months. Zanzibar’s urban space has become a palimpsest of electoral signs, particularly electoral posters, as new posters are pasted over older ones, to the extent that several layers of posters from different electoral sequences coexist. Posters also owe their effectiveness to their inescapable nature: it is impossible not to see them. Striking iconographic elements aim to capture people’s gaze but also to overcome the counter-attractions of opposition parties’ posters. Yet, one may wonder whether, in such a poster-saturated space, electoral images and slogans still achieve their objective of canvassing voters. Like monuments, they do face a paradox: they cannot be ignored, but they can just as easily be forgotten or met with indifference. To paraphrase Robert Musil, discussing monuments, “there is nothing in this world as invisible as (electoral posters). (…) they are imbued with something that repels attention, causing the gaze to roll right off, like water droplets off an oilcloth, without even pausing for a moment” (Musil 2006 [1936], see also Fouéré 2017). If unique, singular posters can have tremendous effects in specific circumstances (Fouéré 2016), in most cases, standardised posters are just another mobilisation strategy to which most voters pay little attention.
Seeing, speaking and imagining maendeleo among voters
How has CCM’s maendeleo language been heard, appropriated, internalised, or alternatively, quietly or more vocally contested in everyday political talk in 2025?[5] For many of our respondents during the last days of the campaign and on Election Day, the association between the CCM ruling party and maendeleo appeared not only coherent but self-evident. A 28-year-old woman in Unguja reflecting on recent changes in her locality explained:
For me, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) brings development to the country: in recent years, roads, schools, and hospitals have been built, and not having to pay for medical care is a major improvement.
On the face value, this woman’s take seems to demonstrate CCM’s governance success. She pinpoints visible features that political candidates have used rhetorically, which are quickly picked up by voters, such as this 28-year-old woman. Evidently, poster grammar finds its echoes in the everyday social lives of people.
The personalization of posters and the development of meaning-making is seen through a 53-year-old woman who observed the following:
I want Hussein Ali Mwinyi to continue to be our leader because he brings development. He has accomplished many great things, including building markets and hospitals and improving many aspects of our community.
Here, maendeleo is not only material—it is embodied and it is done through the figure of the president and the party. Hussein Ali Mwinyi becomes the mediator through which state provision is perceived and interpreted.
For some, embedded histories of the Isles as well as family ties make the attachment to CCM’s framing of maendeleo to be irrelevant. Whether there is maendeleo or not, their vote will always be for CCM. This can be observed from the discussion with a 45-year-old woman who noted:
I’m a stay-at-home mother. I’ve loved the Chama Cha Mapinduzi for as long as I can remember, and politics has always run in my family. I’ve been voting since the late 1990s. I admire the current president (Hussein Ali Mwinyi) because of the new infrastructure he has delivered schools, markets, and other services. I want five more years with this president.
Evidently, for some, if not all, CCM loyalties, voting is simply not about the promise of maendeleo but about choice shaped by inheritance, loyalty, and affection. Maendeleo, in this sense, functions as a bridge between past and present—linking generational attachments to contemporary political messaging.
Further evidence of this can be seen from the CCM MP for Mpendae Constituency, Toufiq Salim Turky who became MP following the death of his father, Salim Turky weeks before the 2020 election. Salim Turky was then a candidate for CCM. Toufiq Turky told us, building infrastructure and making public services accessible to everyone means that the CCM provides for the people, not just for the well-offs observing:
Today, our constituency ranks among the best in terms of infrastructure. Water access, school performances… (…) CCM’s policies are inclusive. Free hospitals, new roads, and education are available to everyone, not just the elite.
These excerpts, as concise as they may be, point to the fact that maendeleo expresses much more than the construction of infrastructure: it is a fluid, plural signifier that makes it possible to speak of family loyalty, affective engagement, the personalisation of power, ordinary hardships, and aspirations for a better life. To put if differently, if maendeleo works as a political technology through which the CCM seeks political legitimacy, or even political hegemony when voting is made an act of allegiance, it is because maendeleo intertwines with some cornerstones of social life in Zanzibari society: family and social ties, respectability and dignity, heritage and transmission. Yet, as reminded by Nguyahambi et al. (2019, 85), “The discourse of maendeleo is also used to de-legitimate critical voices, as anyone not supporting the current path defined by the power holders can be framed as being against development and the good of the country’s citizenry as a whole.” In other words, as far as the CCM is concerned, those who do not embrace the maendeleo vision are enemies of the nation.
| This series of Mambo! focuses on the 2025 election year in Tanzania. It offers an original format for a close reading of politically-related empirical objects linked to this eventful election year, marked by a shift toward massive state violence. In each episode, the selected object is reproduced in its original form and translated where necessary, carefully contextualized and closely annotated or commented with the aim of providing keys to understanding its production, meaning and significance. These objects constitute relevant sources or documents for analysing the openly brutal authoritarian turn taken by the Tanzanian regime during this electoral sequence at the end of 2025. |
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Notes
[1] We follow Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s (2001) perspective, which highlights that concepts—or signifiers—have no fixed signified attached to them, but rather ambiguous, flexible, and variable signifieds, which are laden with historically constructed meanings and can vary and be reshaped depending on the occasions and contexts of their use. Yet, people—and in our case, institutions and organisations, such as the state or political parties—make continuous efforts to construct fixed meanings, or “nodal points” (Ibid: 112).
[2] Here, we deliberately use the Swahili term maendeleo as it is an emic concept whose translation as ‘development’ (sometimes ‘progress’), whilst useful and relevant, fail to fully capture its complex and variable, historically situated meanings.
[3] The analysis presented here is grounded in fieldwork conducted in Zanzibar by Ania Gruca, Nicodemus Minde and Marie-Aude Fouéré during the 2025 electoral period, combining close visual observation of campaign materials with short interviews carried out across Unguja and Pemba in the weeks leading up to the 29 October vote. These short interviews were held with voters of different ages, occupations, and political inclinations.
[4] See also Episode 3 “Foreign bodies, Misguided youth: Samia Suluhu Hassan’s inauguration speech, 3 November 2025” (https://mambo.hypotheses.org/5457).
[5] For more testimonies on political expectations and electoral choices, including by opposition supporters, see the photo-reportage by Ania Gruca associated to this episode, “From Hope to Doubt. Voices from Zanzibaris”.
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Marie-Aude Fouéré, Nicodemus Minde (7 mai 2026). Episode #5. ‘Kura ni alama ya maendeleo’ (‘Voting is a symbol of development’): Promising development in Zanzibar through poster-intensive campaigning. Mambo ! Consulté le 10 juin 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/166xi
