Loliondo Region, Tanzania

Tens of thousands of Masai herders in northern Tanzania this spring are protesting a government plan to remove them from their grazing lands to make way for a private hunting firm from the Persian Gulf.

Tanzania plans a new “wildlife corridor” on 600 square miles of Masai village land in the Loliondo Region, which borders the Serengeti National Park. The move, which the government reaffirmed May 23, will evict 30,000 Masai – and allow exclusive access to the Ortello Business Corporation (OBC), a big-game hunting firm owned by the royal family of Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

That brought immediate fury among the Masai. It set off sit-ins largely led by women, along with dramatic marches across a highland savanna, with demands to drop a plan they say will impoverish and ruin their communities.

The move by Tanzania is part of a much larger appropriation – some say seizure – of land across Africa in which territory is sold or used in large development projects, often with locals being resettled or pushed out. Resettlement in the Gambella district of Ethiopia is just the latest example.

About 90 percent of Loliondo Masai raise animals for sale in neighboring Kenya to pay for food, clothes, and school fees. At one sit-in this spring, Singa Sandeya, a Masai grandmother who owns about 40 cattle, said, “It’s the only livelihood we have. Everything we get from cattle.”

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