Safari Tourism Without Exclusion and Dispossession
Our Land, Our Life, Our Future: A Model for Just and Fair Tourism in Tanzania

With a desire to explore the tourism industry's impacts on our lands, livelihoods, and our human rights, we travelled across Maasai land and spoke with over 600 people from 24 villages in the districts of Ngorongoro, Monduli, Simanjiro and Longido. Women, Morans/youths, elders, traditional leaders, and village council representatives were all included. We asked our community what their experience of tourism has been over the last decades, and how they would like to see tourism evolve.

We found 4 major issues:
(1) Safari tourism contributes to land alienation and restricts access to grazing areas and key strategic resources.
(2) Trophy hunting grabs land and violates human rights: it raises serious moral, ethical and environmental concerns.
(3) Tourism is taking place without our community consent.
(4) Our community is not benefitting from tourism.

But, there is a different way forward.

Rooted in a participatory process with our community, we developed Our Maasai Model for Fair and Just Tourism, in which we detail 10 dimensions intended to guide the reshaping of the tourism industry in Tanzania. We invite tourists to use it to make informed decisions and tourism businesses to improve their policies and practices. We call on the Tanzanian government, the international community and public funders of biodiversity conservation and nature-based tourism to ensure their programmes, policies and funding respect our rights. We will strive to disseminate this model and use it as a tool for dialogue, alliance building with other pastoralist and Indigenous communities, and transformative change.

OVERTOURISM

Tourism in Northern Tanzania is commonly presented as a national success story. Visitor numbers rise, revenues grow, international awards are won and new attractions are promoted. Ngorongoro and Serengeti lead this game of international tourism campaigns and prestige. Yet, these headlines do not show what really happens to lives and livelihoods of the people whose land is turned into tourist destinations.

They fail to expose who controls and grabs the land, who makes the decisions, who benefits and who bears the social, political and environmental costs. For our communities, the central question is not simply whether tourism generates revenue. It is whether tourism promotes and protects our rights and livelihoods, for it is our lands and stewardship that underpin the tourism industry. Tourism in Northern Tanzania, be it safari tourism or hunting, exists because we have protected this land for generations and the wildlife that thrives on it. How did tourism become a financing machine for displacement, evictions and misery?

Left: Tanganyika Wilderness Camps, Masek Tented Lodge swimming pool. (source: https://twctanzania.com/ngorongoro-conservation-area/masek-tented-lodge/).
Right: Women collecting water in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (source: MISA).

Research Report:

Summary, Research Report:

Infographic, Maasai Model for Tourism:

Maasai Model for Tourism: