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US Luxury Safari Operator Tightens Stranglehold Over Maasai Land in Tanzania

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2 years ago

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Oakland, CA – Boston-based Thomson Safaris is exploiting the Tanzanian government’s brutal repression of land defenders to legitimize control over Maasai land in the Loliondo Division of the Ngorongoro District. In June 2022, the government carried out land demarcation to create a Game Reserve in Loliondo, which saw security forces fire live ammunition on the Maasai, severely wounding dozens and displacing thousands. In the immediate aftermath of these events, Thomson Safaris carried out a resurvey of a long-contested land claim they have in the same area. Communities say they were excluded from the resurvey process and alleged in a November 2023 court filing that they have since suffered abuse by the company’s agents enforcing the new boundaries.

“Over the past two years, the Tanzanian government has repeatedly shown it will aid and abet foreign corporations operating luxury safaris at the expense of the Maasai communities who have stewarded these lands for generations. While labeling itself as a sustainable tourism operator, the American firm is getting away with capitalizing on this repression,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute.

Capitalizing on Chaos: Thomson Safaris Tightens Its Stranglehold Over Indigenous Lands in Tanzania exposes how in the aftermath of the resurvey, the strict enforcement of the new boundaries has aggravated daily hardships for the villagers who report incidents of violence – allegedly committed by Thomson Safaris’ guides – against pastoralists and their children. One villager cited in the report alleges, “My boy was taking care of the livestock when he was caught by a Thomson Safaris’ guide and beaten for no reason. He suffered injuries on his body…Our rights have been violated by an intruder in our ancestors’ land.”

As documented in the Oakland Institute’s 2018 report, Losing the Serengeti, since 2006, the Mondorosi, Sukenya, and Soitsambu villages have been ensnared in a prolonged struggle for the return of their lands against the company. Local communities seek to reclaim 10,000 acres of land in what is known to them as the Sukenya farm, originally transferred forty years ago without their Free, Prior, and Informed Consent and vital to their pastoral livelihoods. For over a decade, communities have pursued legal action for the full return of their land in the High Court of Tanzania and Court of Appeal, but to no avail.

On June 8, 2022, the Tanzanian government initiated the illegal demarcation of over 370,000 acres of land in Loliondo Division to create a Game Reserve. The exercise led to widespread violence by state security forces, with dozens of community leaders and villagers arbitrarily arrested while others were forced into hiding. According to local communities, Thomson Safaris took advantage of this increasing state violence against the Maasai and the ensuing chaos to consolidate its claim to the land.

The strict enforcement of the Sukenya farm’s boundaries has reportedly forced villagers to walk hours to access essential medical services and schools. Communities have also lost access to prime grazing land, which has been particularly catastrophic in the context of the drought that ravaged the Horn of Africa between 2020 and 2023. Thomson Safaris is now allegedly lobbying the Tanzanian government to change the land use in the surrounding area exclusively for tourism – a move that would further prohibit Maasai pastoralists’ livestock from accessing vital water and grazing land.

In response to an inquiry by the Oakland Institute, Thomson Safaris’ attorneys in Tanzania denied the allegations about the resurvey and its impact on villagers. While they called the claims “baseless,” the firm failed to provide any evidence that the resurvey took place with full community participation. Despite the ongoing land dispute and allegations of violence made in court by villagers, the company remains the preferred Tanzania operator for high-profile universities, museums, and conservation groups.

Alongside Capitalizing on Chaos, the Institute released Pulling Back the Curtain: How the US Drives Tanzania’s War on the Indigenous. The brief reveals how Tanzania’s largest bilateral donor has been instrumental in designing the country’s aggressive strategy to expand the tourism industry at the expense of Indigenous communities. It details how the US is behind a number of policy changes and measures that have led to the expansion of so-called protected areas and favored private operators, including fiscal measures to their benefit. USAID has for instance prepared development plans for Ruaha National Park – currently being implemented by the World Bank – that will result in the eviction of tens of thousands of people. It has also enabled the creation of new Game Reserves, which will seize over a million hectares of Maasai land and evict thousands of people.

“The fingerprints of the US government are all over the harmful policies and projects to expand protected areas, rendering it complicit in the forced evictions of the Maasai and other local communities across the country. It has turned a blind eye to the egregious human rights abuses of the government so that the rich Americans can keep going on upscale safaris and operators like Thomson Safaris keep raking in massive profits,” concluded Mittal.

Indigenous communities are not enduring hardships solely because of the wrongdoings of the Tanzanian government. The US government and private operators like Thomson Safaris all bear their share of responsibility and must be held accountable for it.

Source: oaklandinstitute.org

Related posts:

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The Great “Green” Heist: When Artificial Intelligence and Arms Dealers Seize the Minerals of the South

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2 weeks ago

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August 4, 2026

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By Franck Zongwe Lukama, Congolese journalist and researcher, leads the independent media KilaloPress in DRC.

We were sold a simple equation: to save the planet, we must dig. Dig faster, deeper, extracting from the earth the cobalt, lithium, or copper needed for solar panels and electric vehicles. Yet, this climate rescue rhetoric conceals a staggering statistical deception. Today, 70% of global demand for critical minerals does absolutely nothing to support the energy transition. These resources end up in aerospace, communication technologies, and, above all, weaponry. Sectors that, ironically, exacerbate the global ecological crisis. The green revolution has become the perfect smokescreen, the moral veneer for a very different kind of war.

Far from the promises of sustainable development touted by the World Bank, the current scramble is driven by a strict logic of geopolitical power. A damning report from the California-based Oakland Institute exposes this global scheme. The report reveals an unprecedented and formidable convergence of interests between the American military-industrial complex and the giants of Silicon Valley. With the Pentagon openly pivoting toward a combat strategy focused on artificial intelligence (AI), securing supply chains is no longer a matter of ecology, but a question of survival in the face of Chinese influence. The United States is not seeking to reduce carbon emissions; it is seeking to guarantee its technological and military supremacy.

Artisanal Coltan - manganese - cobalt mining in Mudere mine under control of Nyatura militia, town of Rubaya, North Kivu region (Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa). Photo: Erberto Zani.

The real winners of this frantic race wear suits far removed from environmental activism. Trillions of dollars are flowing into new alliances that intertwine AI-driven mining companies, like KoBold Metals—backed by billionaires such as Bill Gates—and companies specializing in cutting-edge defense technologies, like Palantir and Anduril, not to mention the networks of influence close to the Trump family. For these players, the discourse of climate emergency acts as a powerful public relations tool. It justifies massive and accelerated extraction that would otherwise provoke international outrage.

Local communities and Indigenous populations find themselves on the frontlines, forced to resist an extraction machine that has the audacity to justify their suffering by claiming it is necessary to save the world.

And the price of this hypocrisy is being paid in full throughout the Global South. In the Rubaya hills, in the Kolwezi copper belt, as in the Indigenous territories of Latin America and Asia, the promise of “prosperity” translates into a terrifyingly familiar tragedy. Land grabbing, forced displacement, devastating groundwater pollution: the plundering of ecosystems and human lives is accelerating. Local communities and Indigenous populations find themselves on the frontlines, forced to resist an extraction machine that has the audacity to justify their suffering by claiming it is necessary to save the world. Today, opposing the destruction of one’s village by a multinational mining company risks being accused of hindering the fight against climate change. The rhetorical trap is devastatingly effective.

Artisanal Coltan - manganese - cobalt mining in Mudere mine under control of Nyatura militia, town of Rubaya, North Kivu region (Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa). Photo: Erberto Zani.

The long-term consequences of this diversion are alarming. The exponential surge in demand generated by future AI data centers, mass surveillance, and global rearmament will mathematically deplete available reserves. Every ton of copper, nickel, or cobalt consumed by combat drones or algorithmic data processing servers is a ton diverted from the production of renewable energy infrastructure. We are not equipping the energy transition; we are cannibalizing it to militarize our future.

We are not equipping the energy transition; we are cannibalizing it to militarize our future.

If no strict regulations are put in place to curb this rampant mining frenzy, hundreds of new mines will spring up in the coming years, causing irreversible damage on an unprecedented scale. The question facing citizens today, from Kinshasa to Washington, is no longer whether we will have enough minerals to save our atmosphere. It is why we are willing to sacrifice millions of lives and destroy our lands to fuel next-generation algorithms and weapons. In ten years, when the Global South is nothing more than a vast crater serving a militarized hyper-technology, it will be too late to realize that the planet was never the priority.

Photos: Artisanal Coltan – manganese – cobalt mining in Mudere mine under control of Nyatura militia, town of Rubaya, North Kivu region (Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa). Erberto Zani – stock.adobe.com

Source: oaklandinstitute.org/

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Rush: Global Scramble for Minerals Wages War on People and Planet Experts warn that without Africa’s control over resources and climate financing, the continent faces the risk of entering a new era of “green colonialism”. 30 civil society organizations have written to the World Bank Group demanding to publicly disclose the Africa Energy Approach paper. Africa Climate Summit 2023 Set to Surrender the Continent to Green Colonialism The mothers and daughters of the global south cannot celebrate the World Bank’s 80-year legacy of harm.
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EU: IPI welcomes action against 14 states over Anti-SLAPP Directive delays

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3 weeks ago

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July 27, 2026

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EU states must introduce robust measures to protect journalists and media from vexatious litigation

The International Press Institute (IPI) today welcomes the infringement proceedings initiated by the European Commission against 14 EU Member States over their inaction or delays in transposing the Anti-SLAPP Directive.

The countries included are Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Spain.

The EU infringement proceedings were initiated on 15 July, with letters of formal notice sent to these Member States for failing to notify about progress made in implementing the Directive. States now have two months to respond and update about measures taken or could eventually face legal action at the European Court of Justice.

The Anti-SLAPP Directive introduced EU-wide rules which protect journalists and civil society actors from manifestly unfounded or abusive civil proceedings with cross-border implications, including early dismissal tools and remedies for targets of SLAPPs. It was adopted in April 2024 and the transposition deadline was 7 May 2026.

Monitoring by IPI shows that while in some of the countries identified, such as Greece and Spain, steps have been taken to prepare for the transposition and bills are actively in development and reportedly close to being presented to or adopted by parliament.

In others such as Bulgaria and Portugal, initial work done to develop legislation has been delayed by institutional changes, changes in governments or political instability, though transposition work remains ongoing.

In other states, such as Italy and Hungary, little to no measurable progress has yet been made on transposition. However, with the new Tisza government in Hungary driving forward media freedom reforms, there is hope the new administration will introduce initial anti-SLAPP measures in the next legislative package identified for the autumn.

While Ireland has been actively working to tackle SLAPPs through legal reforms, and passed the Defamation Bill in 2024, further legislation is required to fully transpose the Anti-SLAPP Directive during its Presidency of the Council of the EU.

Although these 14 countries have been identified in the EU action, monitoring and analyses show that the overall picture for implementation of the Directive across the EU remains fragmented and uneven.

According to the European Anti-SLAPP Monitor, almost all EU Member States missed the May 2026 transposition deadline, with only a handful fully implementing on time.

IPI notes that even in those Member States where the Directive was implemented, such as Malta, these reforms only included minimum standards protecting against cross-border cases, and failed to include measures to safeguard against domestic SLAPPs.

In the wake of the EU’s opening of initial infringement action, IPI renews our call – made previously with Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) partners – for Member States to demonstrate their commitment to media freedom by accelerating their legislative processes in protecting against SLAPPs. This includes the 14 countries identified by the EU Commission and those in which reforms have been presented but not yet adopted.

Crucially, legislative reforms should both fully reflect both the letter and the spirit of the Anti-SLAPP Directive and introduce the substantive and procedural safeguards set out in the EU and Council of Europe Recommendation on SLAPPs.

A model here should be Poland, where last month the President approved a law which covers both domestic and cross-border SLAPPs, ensuring implementation of both EU Directive and Council of Europe Recommendation.

Member States which continue to delay or fail to transpose the directive should face legal action from the Commission, which must use all tools at its disposal to help safeguard media freedom across the bloc.

IPI, which has advocated at the EU and national level for measures to protect journalists and media from SLAPPs, will continue to monitor implementation in collaboration with European partners, including through MFRR media freedom missions.

Source: ipi.media/

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NGO WORK

No Heritage Without its People: Why Ngorongoro Cannot be a World Heritage Site and an Eviction Zone

Published

1 month ago

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July 20, 2026

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The Tanzanian government, under the guise of “conservation,” restricts Maasai livelihoods and denies access to essential services forcing Indigenous residents away from their ancestral lands and turning their heritage into a playground for safari tourists.

As the 48th Session of the World Heritage Committee begins July 19, UNESCO continues to legitimize the continued forced displacement of the Maasai from Ngorongoro. If UNESCO cannot ensure that the World Heritage designation protects the rights of its Indigenous custodians, then the Committee must remove the Ngorongoro Conservation Area from the World Heritage List.

Increased international pressure is imperative to hold UNESCO accountable and protect the lives and rights of the Maasai!

Read our Open Letter to the World Heritage Committee.

Source: oaklandinstitute.org

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