“Moving with” an African City: Reflections on Ethnographic Methods in Dar es Salaam

Calls to rethink the foundations of anthropological fieldwork in Africa have shaped debates for decades. Scholars have challenged Eurocentric assumptions that influence research design, interpretation, and the positioning of African lifeworlds within global anthropology. This article contributes to these discussions through a methodological reflection on fieldwork in Dar es Salaam. We worked alongside people whose livelihoods depend on constant movement across the city. One of us rode with bodaboda drivers navigating traffic, risk, and infrastructural strain. The other walked with waste collectors gathering metals from discarded electronics and household appliances. Drawing on participatory and mobile ethnography, we treat movement as co-presence, where knowledge emerges through shared exposure to heat, fatigue, risk, and everyday negotiation. We do not propose a new method. Rather, we describe “moving with” as a situated practice grounded in the city’s social and infrastructural realities. Waste collectors and bodaboda drivers operate within precarity, stigma, and improvisation. Their expertise is embodied and relational, produced through motion. By walking and riding with them, we learned how they manage risk, evaluate value, claim space, and sustain livelihoods, positioning them as guides in the research process and contributing to debates on decolonising ethnography in Africa.