Across Africa projects of capitalist extraction still ensure evictions, mass expropriations of land and misery. Today the government of Tanzania wants to expand the space for luxury tourists to enjoy picturesque views of nature – a wildlife fantasy of nature supposedly untouched by humans. Laibor Kalanga Moko and Jonas Bens argue that justification for the dispossession of indigenous communities has shifted from “economic development” to “wildlife conservation”.
While conservation NGOs have condemned the violence meted out against the Maasai in Loliondo, they do not want herders or subsistence hunters on land that they seek to control and profit from and will fight to retain their power with the immense resources at their disposal.
Urban displacements greatly diminish the living conditions of already desperate populations living on the brink of poverty.
The Community Land Act, No. 27 of 2016 (the Act) came into force on 21 September 2016. The Act gives effect to Article 63 of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010 (the Constitution) which provides for the classification of land known as community land. While the law is progressive on paper- it enables local communities to register and own their communal lands legally, its application has been slow. The Elephant in conversation with Dr Hussein Wario, Executive Director at the Center for Research and Development in Drylands, Kenya.
The Tanzanian government is threatening to evict more than 80,000 Maasai from the Ngorongoro world heritage site, claiming that the Maasai must be cleared from their land in the interests of conservation and wildlife corridors.
It is a myth that the only way to increase productivity on existing agricultural lands is through Green Revolution programmes and evidence shows that they are among the principal causes of unsustainable land use.
Pastoralists have long been the object of unfavourable and misleading stereotypes and narratives that have contributed to their communities' neglect and marginalization.
Historically, drivers of conflict in Marsabit County have been competition for land and water resources but the violence increasingly appears to be politically instigated.
If the designs of global big money are not stopped in their tracks, Africa is threatened with environmental degradation and nutritional poverty.
Historic land injustices, changing land ownership and use, and heightened competition for natural resources — exacerbated by the effects of climate change — make for a perfect storm.
Despite the enacting of the Community Lands Act of 2016, pastoral communities in Kenya have continued to be disadvantaged by the weak nature of their land tenure rights.
The government has passed laws that routinely undervalue pastoralists’ land and undermine pastoralism as a system of production and main source of livelihood in the drylands.