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Tanzanian High Court Tramples Rights of Indigenous Maasai Pastoralists to Boost Tourism Revenues

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1 year ago

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Maasai community members await the High Court of Tanzania ruling in October 2024.
  • Tanzanian High Court has dismissed a case filed by Maasai communities to return land violently seized by the government in June 2022 to establish the Pololeti Game Reserve for trophy hunting by the Emirati Royal Family in Loliondo.
  • In violation of Tanzanian law, impacted Maasai communities were neither consulted nor compensated for being forced from their land, critical for over 96,000 people living in legally registered villages in the area.
  • The ruling sets a dangerous precedent for Indigenous land rights across Tanzania and calls into question the independence of the judiciary that openly cited tourism revenues as a factor in its decision.

On October 24, 2024, the High Court of Tanzania dismissed a case (Misc. Civil Cause No. 18 of 2023) from impacted Maasai pastoralists challenging the creation of the Pololeti Game Reserve, which has resulted in crippling livelihood restrictions and widespread evictions to allow for trophy hunting in the area by the Emirati Royal Family. The shocking ruling deals a blow to Indigenous land rights across Tanzania and raises serious questions regarding the independence of the Tanzanian judiciary.

“The ruling has far-reaching consequences not only for the Maasai of Loliondo but to all people near protected areas. With this ruling, Maasai in Monduli, Simanjiro, Longido, and Ngaresero are now also at the risk of eviction without compensation,” said Denis Oleshangay, one of the advocates representing the community in the case.

On June 8, 2022, the government forcefully seized 1,500 square kilometers of land in Loliondo to create the Pololeti Game Controlled Area for the exclusive use of the Emirati Royal Family. Maasai communities protesting the theft of their land were met with violent retaliation by security forces who opened fire on the protestors. At least 30 people, including women, children, and elderly, were wounded. One elderly man was shot and remains missing over two years later while his family is still seeking answers. Thousands were displaced and fled to Kenya where they faced hunger and sickness. To suppress dissent, community members and civil society leaders have been criminalized and imprisoned for months on false charges.

Presiding over the case, Judge N.R. Mwaseba ruled that the needs of local communities should not take precedence over the value of the land to the economy. “The decision to promulgate the Pololeti Game Reserve was executed in good faith by the Government with a view to protect and ensure sustainable conservation in order to protect the natural resources, including the wild animals as a major source of foreign currency in our country…I have demonstrated above that the tourism sector is among the giant sectors contributing heavily to the national budget. It deserves close protection, including protection of the areas reserved for that purpose.”

In September 2023, in response to a separate case brought by impacted villagers (Misc. Civil Cause No. 21 of 2022(link is external)), the High Court of Tanzania ruled that because communities were not properly consulted by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism (MNRT) prior to the land use change, the Pololeti Game Controlled Area was illegal. The victory was short lived as President Samia Suluhu Hassan had also issued a separate decree (GN No. 604 of 2022) to upgrade the same area to become the Pololeti Game Reserve in October 2022. While communities defeated in court the first attempt by the MNRT to seize their land, they were forced to file another case (Misc. Civil Cause No. 18 of 2023) against the President’s Pololeti Game Reserve decree. This was dismissed despite questionable new evidence proving adequate consultation by the government.

“The discrepancy in rulings by the High Court demonstrates how the government can keep shopping for judges until it gets a favorable outcome, making a mockery of justice,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute. “Impacted communities must scramble to take action in the courts and even when they win, the government can still circumvent the ruling by issuing another decree.”

In the dismissed Misc. Civil Cause No. 18 of 2023, advocates for the communities documented how the creation of the game reserve has impacted over 96,000 people whose livelihoods depend on access to land for grazing and watering cattle. Pastoralists have faced massive fines and had livestock arbitrarily seized and killed by wildlife authorities despite the fact that pastoralists play a vital role in protecting the ecosystem. Over a dozen villages are now considered illegal within the Game Reserve, while villagers were neither consulted nor compensated for losing their lands, as required by Tanzanian law.

Live ammunition fired by Tanzanian security forces during demarcation of the Pololeti Game Controlled Area in June 2022

Despite international condemnation of the government’s violent land demarcation to create the protected area in June 2022, the Judge shockingly concluded that “The allegation that the state apparatuses such as police, army, wildlife rangers harassed the inhabitants of the promulgated area is not substantiated. The featured videos do not show whether they relate to establishment of GN No. 604 of 2022.”

The United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based Otterlo Business Company (OBC) – which runs hunting excursions for the country’s royal family and their guests – will reportedly control hunting in the area despite the company’s past involvement in several violent evictions of the Maasai, including in 2017, burning of homes, and the killing of thousands of rare animals in the area.

“When a government recklessly violates the rights of its citizens, and domestic courts offer little hope for redress, international scrutiny and action is paramount. The US and other donor governments who finance so-called conservation in Tanzania with tax-payer money must take immediate action to help secure justice or be held accountable for their complicity,” Mittal concluded.

Advocates for the impacted villagers have already filed a notice of intention to appeal the ruling.

Original Source: oaklandinstitute.org

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Climate wash: The World Bank’s Fresh Offensive on Land Rights

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8 hours ago

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November 13, 2025

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Climate wash: The World Bank’s Fresh Offensive on Land Rights reveals how the Bank is appropriating climate commitments made at the Conference of the Parties (COP) to justify its multibillion-dollar initiative to “formalize” land tenure across the Global South. While the Bank claims that it is necessary “to access land for climate action,” Climatewash uncovers that its true aim is to open lands to agribusiness, mining of “transition minerals,” and false solutions like carbon credits – fueling dispossession and environmental destruction. Alongside plans to spend US$10 billion on land programs, the World Bank has also pledged to double its agribusiness investments to US$9 billion annually by 2030.

This report details how the Bank’s land programs and policy prescriptions to governments dismantle collective land tenure systems and promote individual titling and land markets as the norm, paving the way for private investment and corporate takeover. These reforms, often financed through loans taken by governments, force countries into debt while pushing a “structural transformation” that displaces smallholder farmers, undermines food sovereignty, and prioritizes industrial agriculture and extractive industries.

Drawing on a thorough analysis of World Bank programs from around the world, including case studies from Indonesia, Malawi, Madagascar, the Philippines, and Argentina, Climatewash documents how the Bank’s interventions are already displacing communities and entrenching land inequality. The report debunks the Bank’s climate action rhetoric. It details how the Bank’s efforts to consolidate land for industrial agriculture, mining, and carbon offsetting directly contradict the recommendations of the IPCC, which emphasizes the protection of lands from conversion and overexploitation and promotes practices such as agroecology as crucial climate solutions.

Read full report: Climatewash: The World Bank’s Fresh Offensive on Land Rights

Source: The Oakland Institute

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NGO WORK

Africa’s Land Is Not Empty: New Report Debunks the Myth of “Unused Land” and Calls for a Just Future for the Continent’s Farmland

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9 hours ago

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November 13, 2025

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A new report challenges one of the most persistent and harmful myths shaping Africa’s development agenda — the idea that the continent holds vast expanses of “unused” or “underutilised” land waiting to be transformed into industrial farms or carbon markets.

Titled Land Availability and Land-Use Changes in Africa (2025), the study exposes how this colonial-era narrative continues to justify large-scale land acquisitions, displacements, and ecological destruction in the name of progress.

Drawing on extensive literature reviews, satellite data, and interviews with farmers in Zambia, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, the report systematically dismantles five false assumptions that underpin the “land abundance” narrative:

  1. That Africa has vast quantities of unused arable land available for cultivation

  2. That modern technology can solve Africa’s food crisis

  3. That smallholder farmers are unproductive and incapable of feeding the continent

  4. That markets and higher yields automatically improve food access and nutrition

  5. That industrial agriculture will generate millions of decent jobs

Each of these claims, the report finds, is deeply flawed. Much of the land labelled as “vacant” is, in reality, used for grazing, shifting cultivation, foraging, or sacred and ecological purposes. These multifunctional landscapes sustain millions of people and are far from empty.

The study also shows that Africa’s food systems are already dominated by small-scale farmers, who produce up to 80% of the continent’s food on 80% of its farmland. Rather than being inefficient, their agroecological practices are more resilient, locally adapted, and socially rooted than the industrial models promoted by external donors and corporations.

Meanwhile, the promise that industrial agriculture will lift millions out of poverty has not materialised. Mechanisation and land consolidation have displaced labour, while dependency on imported seeds and fertilisers has trapped farmers in cycles of debt and dependency.

A Continent Under Pressure

Beyond these myths, the report reveals a growing land squeeze as multiple global agendas compete for Africa’s territory: the expansion of mining for critical minerals, large-scale carbon-offset schemes, deforestation for timber and commodities, rapid urbanisation, and population growth.

Between 2010 and 2020, Africa lost more than 3.9 million hectares of forest annually — the highest deforestation rate in the world. Grasslands, vital carbon sinks and grazing ecosystems, are disappearing at similar speed.

Powerful actors — from African governments and Gulf states to Chinese investors, multinational agribusinesses, and climate-finance institutions — are driving this race for land through opaque deals that sideline local communities and ignore customary tenure rights.

A Call for a New Vision

The report calls for a radical shift away from high-tech, market-driven, land-intensive models toward people-centred, ecologically grounded alternatives. Its key policy recommendations include:

  • Promoting agroecology as a pathway for food sovereignty, ecological regeneration, and rural livelihoods.

  • Reducing pressure on land by improving agroecological productivity, cutting food waste, and prioritising equitable distribution.

  • Rejecting carbon market schemes that commodify land and displace communities.

  • Legally recognising customary land rights, particularly for women and Indigenous peoples.

  • Upholding the principle of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) for all land-based investments.

This report makes it clear: Africa’s land is not “empty” — it is lived on, worked on, and cared for. The future of African land must not be dictated by global capital or outdated development theories, but shaped by the people who depend on it.

Download the Report

Read the full report Land Availability and Land-Use Changes in Africa (2025) to explore the evidence and policy recommendations in detail.

Source: Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA)

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NGO WORK

Discover How Foreign Interests and Resource Extraction Continue to Drive Congo’s Crisis

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1 day ago

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November 12, 2025

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Whereas Donald Trump hailed the “peace” agreement between Rwanda and DRC as marking the end of a deadly three-decade war, a new report from the Oakland Institute, Shafted: The Scramble for Critical Minerals in the DRC, exposes it as the latest US maneuver to control Congolese critical minerals.

Under the Guise of Peace

After three decades of deadly wars and atrocities, the June 2025 “peace” deal between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) lays bare the United States’ role in entrenching the extraction of minerals under the guise of diplomacy. For decades, US backing of Rwanda and Uganda has fueled the violence, which has ripped millions of Congolese lives apart while enabling the looting of the country’s mineral wealth. Today, Washington presents itself as a broker of peace, yet its longstanding support for Rwanda made it possible for M23 to seize territory, capture key mining sites, and forced Kinshasa to the negotiation table with hands tied behind its back. By legitimizing Rwanda’s territorial advances, the US-brokered agreement effectively rewards aggression while sidelining accountability, justice for victims, and the sovereignty of the Congolese people.

The incorporation of “formalized” mineral supply chains from eastern DRC to Rwanda exposes the pact’s true aim: Securing access to and control over minerals under the guise of diplomacy and “regional integration.” Framed as peacemaking, this is part of United States’ broader geopolitical struggle with China for control over critical resources. Far from fostering peace – over a thousand civilians have been killed since the deal was signed while parallel negotiations with Rwanda’s rebel force have collapsed – this arrangement risks deepening Congo’s subjugation. Striking deals with the Trump administration and US firms, the DRC government is surrendering to a new era of exploitation while the raging war continues, driving the unbearable suffering of the Congolese people.

Introduction

The conflict in eastern DRC, which dates back three decades to the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and subsequent Congo Wars, has claimed over six million lives, displaced millions more, and inflicted widespread suffering. Since late 2021, Rwanda and its proxy militia, M23, have stormed through mineral-rich lands and regional capitals, inflicting brutal violence and triggering mass displacement. While billions of dollars in natural resources are extracted from the area, Congolese communities toil in extreme poverty.

On June 27, 2025, a “peace” agreement was signed between Rwanda and the DRC under the auspices of the Trump administration, with diplomatic assistance from Qatar.1 The deal included pledges to respect the territorial integrity of both countries, to promote peaceful relations through the disarmament of armed groups, the return of refugees, and the creation of a joint security mechanism. A key clause commits the countries to launch a regional economic integration framework that would entail “mutually beneficial partnerships and investment opportunities,” specifically for the extraction of the DRC’s mineral wealth by US private interests.

Placing the deal in a historical perspective – after three decades of conflict and over seven decades of US chess game around Congolese minerals – this report examines its implications for the Congolese people as well as the interests involved in the plunder of the country’s resources.

The report begins by retracing 30 years of war, fueled by the looting of Congo’s mineral wealth and devastating for the people of eastern DRC. It then examines how US policy in Central Africa, from the Cold War to the present, has been shaped by its interest in Congolese minerals, sustained alliances with Rwanda and Uganda, and a consistent pattern of overlooking atrocities in support of these allies.

The report then analyses the implications of the regional economic integration aspect of the deal, which aims to link mineral supply chains in the DRC and Rwanda with US investors. The last sections examine the prospect for lasting peace and security resulting from the deal and the impact of growing involvement of US private actors in DRC and Rwanda.

Original Source: Oakland Institute

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