Pulling Back the Curtain: How the US Drives Tanzania’s War on the Indigenous

This brief reveals how Tanzania’s largest bilateral donor has been instrumental in designing the country’s aggressive strategy to expand the tourism industry at the expense of Indigenous communities. It details how the US is behind a number of policy changes and measures that have led to the expansion of so-called protected areas and favored private operators, including fiscal measures to their benefit. USAID has for instance prepared development plans for Ruaha National Park – currently being implemented by the World Bank – that will result in the eviction of tens of thousands of people. It has also enabled the creation of new Game Reserves, which will seize over a million hectares of Maasai land and evict thousands of people.