Resolving farmer–pastoralist conflict in Tanzania

Land-use conflict is not a new phenomenon for pastoralists and farmers in Tanzania, with killing of people and livestock often featuring in the news. Various actors, including NGOs, have tried to address crop farmer–pastoralist conflict through mass education programmes, land-use planning, policy reforms and developing community institutions, but these efforts have not been successful. According to the paper “In search of the solution to farmer–pastoralist conflicts in Tanzania” (2017, 15pp, Southern African Institute of International Affairs Occasional Paper 257) by Godfrey Massay, resolving the mutual hostility between farmers and pastoralists is problematic because it is linked to historical evictions that happened from the colonial and post-colonial period until the early 1990s. The paper points to the limitations in Tanzania’s formal mechanisms for settling land disputes. It calls for reform of the existing systems, which favour the interests of neither the crop farmers nor the pastoralists. Drawing on experiences of a farmer–pastoralist platform established by the Tanzania Natural Resource Forum, a local NGO working on issues of natural resource governance, it proposes an alternative mechanism based on popular participation of the victims in resolving the conflicts.

Posted on 25 June 2017 in Pastoralism & Natural Resources, Pastoralism & Peacebuilding