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World Bank-Funded TANAPA Rangers Murder Two Villagers in Ruaha National Park

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6 months ago

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Pastoralists recounting the murder of Mr. Igembe. Source: East Africa TV

In the last two weeks, TANAPA rangers have killed two villagers within the disputed boundaries of the Ruaha National Park in Tanzania. These murders shatter promises made just a month ago by the Tanzanian government and the World Bank to end ranger violence and allow livelihood activities to continue within the park.

On April 26, 2025, six fishermen were confronted by rangers outside of Mwanjurwa, near Ikanutwa and Nyeregete villages in the Ihefu Basin. As they tried to escape, rangers shot 27-year-old Hamprey Mhaki in the back. It is believed that Mr. Mhaki succumbed to his gunshot wound, as the search party only found a large amount of blood where he was last seen. He remains missing – while his pregnant wife and grieving family search for answers and demand justice.

Hamprey Augstuno Mhaki, a young fisherman shot by TANAPA rangers in April 2025
Hamprey Mhaki, a young fisherman shot by TANAPA rangers in April 2025

In another incident, on May 7, 2025, a group of herders and their cattle in the Udunguzi sub-village of Iyala village were attacked by a TANAPA helicopter that opened fire with live ammunition. Eyewitnesses report that Kulwa Igembe, a 20-year-old Sukuma herder, was shot in the chest by one of the rangers on the ground. He died at the scene. Mr. Igembe is survived by his widow and young daughter.

According to Tanzanian media, four TANAPA rangers are being held by the Mbeya Regional Police Force for their involvement in Mr. Igembe’s killing. His body remains at the Mochwari Mission hospital, as his family has refused to proceed with burial until authorities conduct a full and transparent investigation. Furthermore, local sources state that over 1,000 cattle belonging to several herders were seized and impounded at the Madundasi ranger post following the attack. About 500 cattle have been reclaimed after herders paid TSh100,000 per head [US$37] in fines – delivering a substantial financial blow.

The Bank’s  REGROW project, now cancelled, built the enforcement capacity of the rangers who committed these murders. In the 2024 investigation by its Inspection Panel, the Bank conceded that by “enhancing TANAPA’s capacity to enforce the law,” the project “increased the possibility of violent confrontations” between rangers and villagers. The Panel found the Bank to have failed to adequately supervise TANAPA and ignored rangers use of “excessive force,” in violation of international standards. Already over the course of the REGROW project, at least 11 individuals were killed by police or rangers, five disappeared, and dozens suffered physical and psychological harm, including torture and sexual violence.

“The murders of Mr. Igembe and Mr. Mhaki make it painfully clear that the Tanzanian government has no intent to end atrocities against local communities for tourist revenue. These brutal actions not only constitute abject crimes but are also a blatant violation of the commitments the government made to the World Bank,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute. “The Bank created a monster in TANAPA and must be held accountable along with the rogue ranger force,” Mittal added.

In its April 2, 2025 press release, the World Bank stated that “The Government of Tanzania has committed to implementing the MAP [Management Action Plan],  and the World Bank will support and supervise its implementation.” The Action Plan is based on the premise that the government will honor its now broken promise that there will be no resettlement and villagers can continue their livelihood activities, like grazing and fishing. Iyala village, where Mr. Igembe was killed, is one of the five villages consumed by the October 2023 expansion of Ruaha National Park.

The Bank also committed to addressing violence by TANAPA rangers through a grievance mechanism and trainings on “relevant good international practice in protected area management.” Unfortunately, the Oakland Institute’s warning to the Bank’s officials, that given the extent of TANAPA’s human rights abuses, these measures would fail in preventing future harms, has come true.

“The violence hasn’t stopped. Villagers are being killed, their cattle stolen, their lives destroyed. Local communities are desperate for the world to listen. The Oakland Institute joins them in demanding that the World Bank take responsibility and act now. Every day of silence costs lives. The victims and their families deserve justice, truth, and the chance to live without fear,” concluded Mittal.

Source:The Oakland Institute

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

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2 days 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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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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2 days 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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Discover How Foreign Interests and Resource Extraction Continue to Drive Congo’s Crisis

Published

3 days 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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