Dar es Salaam, 05 November, 2022 / 9:00 pm (ACI Africa).
Civil and Faith-based organizations with presence in Africa are against the unilateral decision of the Government of Tanzania to evict the Maasai from their ancestral land within Conservancy Areas in the Northern part of the country.
Thousands of Maasai pastoralists have been asked to move from their ancestral home in the Loliondo and Ngorongoro Conservation Area to pave way for the government to lease the land to Otterlo Business Corporation (OBC), a company based in the United Arab Emirates, to create elite tourism.
In a Wednesday, November 2 statement shared with ACI Africa, the civil and faith-based organization leaders say around 160,000 Maasais are affected by the decision of the Government of Tanzania to “forcefully evict them out of their ancestral lands.”
“We wish to express our solidarity with the struggle of the Maasai communities living in Loliondo and in Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania,” they say, adding that they are disturbed by the government’ allegation that the Maasai people are a threat to the wildlife and environment they currently live in.
They say that the “Maasai Indigenous Peoples have preserved their environment and lived in coexistence with the wildlife in these areas for centuries. Now the Tanzanian Government is arguing that they are a threat to the environment, and that the only way to protect it is to remove the people from their ancestral lands.”
