Why were 50,000 Maasai people gathering in protest in the Ngorongoro area of Tanzania in the last week of August? Trying to answer that question is like peeling back an onion of many layers. It brings together many knotty elements of the complex and rapidly changing world of 21st-century tourism.
On August 21 Chadema, a major political party in Tanzania, posted on Facebook images of a massive demonstration that carried on for days in the area of the Ngorongoro Crater.
The pictures showed what looked like a sea of indigenous Maasai people, painting the African landscape red with their traditional red robes. The post claimed that 50,000 people had gathered there for four days, at that point, to protest the government’s action to relocate them to create a new conservation area in the Ngorongoro area.
According to an August 25 report by Johannesburg-based journalist Kim Harrisberg in the Irish Times, “For a week, the green hills around Tanzania’s famous Ngorongoro crater have been chequered with the blood red shuka cloths of tens of thousands of Maasai herdsman protesting their eviction from their land – all in the name of conservation.”
Back in the 1950s, the pastoralist Maasai people were moved from the Serengeti by the British colonial government to create the Serengeti National Park. At that time the Maasai were told they could live at the Ngorongoro conservation area nearby.
Now, according to Harrisberg, “the Tanzanian government wants to evict tens of thousands of them from Ngorongoro to make more space for conservation sites, lucrative luxury tourism and trophy hunting.”
Harris’s article gathers together some of the history of these issues and is worth following up on to gain more understanding of these highly complicated issues.
This has become a crossroads of many interests in the tourism industry and beyond. It’s an example of the kind of issues that arise in the rapidly changing modern world when the interests of different groups collide.
Tourism has been one of the best friends of conservation in recent decades. The income from safari lodges is one of the main sources of support for efforts to protect endangered wildlife from extinction.
And tourism has been a good friend to the local people in most destinations. With the spread in recent decades of the practice of sustainable tourism principles, tourism has increasingly been an agent for conservation and environmental protection around the world.
Under the rubric of sustainability, tourism enterprises must benefit the destination and the people of the destination, not just the tourism industry itself. The interests of local people must be among the principal elements in their calculations and projects. Safari lodges, for example, provide employment for people who live near reserves and thereby help to raise their standard of living. Most of them also make contributions to schools and other resources in the areas where they function.
Tourism in Africa in modern times is usually a friend to indigenous people. But, as we have seen in places as varied as Machu Picchu and Barcelona, sometimes those interests collide. Here we have a situation in which the needs of the local Maasai people are apparently pitted against these particular conservation efforts.
Tanzania is one of 195 countries to adopt a global pact established in 2022 in Montreal at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) to commit to preserving 30 percent of its land by 2030. It’s called the 30X30 initiative. It also calls for the protection of the indigenous people of those areas.
Sometimes conservation practices run in opposition to the interests of indigenous people. The Maasai keep cattle, and that can sometimes be in opposition to protecting the indigenous wildlife, which may include predators that want to prey on cattle.
It’s an extremely complex and dynamic set of problems. I spoke to some tour operators who are close to African tourism to try to gain insight into what looks like a very tough situation in Tanzania. These are thorny, multidimensional issues, not black-and-white or green. There are no simple answers, but the problems are worthy of attention and consideration, because they are typical of the types of issues that will continue to arise as part of the ongoing struggles of an evolving world.
Thomas Stanley, former Africa program director at Mountain Travel Sobek and former president of Travcoa, has Maasai friends going back many decades. He told me, “For decades, my involvement in tour design meant I designed programs that view the indigenous people as an essential part of the destination. I reiterated that ‘too many Americans go to Africa but never have a meaningful conversation an African.’ The Maasai are an essential part of the Ngorongoro ecosystem. They and their cattle have been there for generations. To remove them to accommodate more tourism does severe damage to the delicate environmental balance there.
“As we have seen, time and time again,” he continued, “indigenous peoples are forced onto a ‘trail of tears’ similar to what happened to Native Americans over 100 years ago. Many Maasai are protectors of the animals. Many Maasai tour operators and guides are caught between a rock and a hard place – the Tanzanian government and their own people’s rights. The American travel industry must take a stand to protect the rights of the Maasai whose lands we intrude on.”
Ashish Sanghrajka, president of Big Five Tours and a native of Kenya, had this to say about the situation.
“This is a long-standing issue, unfortunately. This is centered around the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and the Maasai are semi-nomadic. They are sadly in danger of being relocated for a variety of reasons. There are two items at play here, and a very complicated problem. The displacement of the Maasai dates back decades to when Serengeti was declared a national park. Designated grazing areas, human-wildlife conflicts, and tourism were all ingredients in this problem. Now there is a fourth problem with the Maasai in the conservation area, which is population growth among their communities and the need for more land.
“Moving these people off their rightful land should never be a solution, especially since Tanzania is a signatory to the United Nations Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous People, which was over a decade ago. Possible solutions could be following the conservancy model of the Northern Rangelands Trust in Kenya, or the Land Trust model that is in other parts of Africa. Namibia’s conservancies are another great example.
“Tourism can be a force for good here, through the above models. While doing this, the problem of overcrowding on the crater floor can also be addressed through a shared benefit between all stakeholders.”
I asked Ashish if he could see any possible solutions for a tangle of problems that seems hopelessly knotted. He said, yes, he did have some ideas for ways to accommodate the various interests.
Here are his suggestions, which he acknowledged are “complicated solutions,” but, “these are complicated problems.”
Ashish Sanghrajka’s Suggestions:
- Within the conservation area, create a protected land conservation trust or conservancy that protects grazing rights and realistic land parcels that are protected.
- Create a proper revenue sharing within the conservancy with the Pastoral Maasai. This is a complicated solution, however, the conservancy model has proven to work in Kenya, and the Northern Rangelands Trust are a great example.
- Set up a ratio in that land conservation trust. For example, for every acre needed for tourism, the rightful Maasai receive three acres or any type of locked ratio. The balance is never under threat as it is now.
Because the situation is so politically sensitive, some offered ideas confidentially. Here’s a statement by one who preferred to speak off the record.
“The ongoing three-way balance between the living style of the semi-nomadic Maasai, the protection of wildlife, and the economic necessity of access for visitors becomes challenging at times. Sometimes adjustments are necessary to get back to the earlier equilibrium.
“Evidently, population growth among the Maasai is the current issue confronting the balancing of interests in Ngorongoro. Being nomadic, the Maasai are not typically cultivating owners of land but they need access to more given their rise in population, hence the politics.”
Unfortunately, this only scratches the surface of a cluster of problems so complicated as to seem almost unapproachable. But hopefully, by bravely facing the issues, those competing interests can find fair ways to move forward.
David Cogswell is a freelance writer working remotely, from wherever he is at the moment. Born at the dead center of the United States during the last century, he has been incessantly moving and exploring for decades. His articles have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Fox News, Luxury Travel Magazine, Travel Weekly, Travel Market Report, Travel Agent Magazine, TravelPulse.com, Quirkycruise.com, and other publications. He is the author of four books and a contributor to several others. He was last seen somewhere in the Northeast US.
