Grappling with land pressure

Elibariki Isaya, a pastoralist in northern Tanzania’s Kiteto District, has been caught in clashes between farmers in the area.

"We are regarded as refugees in our own country," he said. "Farmers have thrown us off the land. We now have nowhere to take cattle, goats and sheep for grazing and drinking water."

Isaya is not alone in a country that boasts about 18 million head of cattle - the third-largest number in Africa, after Ethiopia and Sudan.

However, while huge herds of cattle are an important source of wealth, they are increasingly becoming a problem for government planners and politicians, Isaya told Prime Minister Edward Lowassa, who visited the area in November.

Economists and industry sources say the livestock sector has great potential for propelling Tanzania - one of the world’s poorest nations - into a more prosperous future, if it better managed.

Most Tanzanian livestock keepers are pastoralists who move around with their cattle, goats, sheep, donkeys and dogs. The pastoralists are blamed for environmental problems, including soil erosion.

Lowassa urged district authorities to draw up proper land-use plans, allocating land according to community needs.

"Farmers must be given land for cultivation of crops and pastoral communities should also get grazing fields and places where they can take animals to drink water," he said.

Like every other Tanzanian, he added, pastoralists were free to live anywhere, provided they observed the law and guidelines relating to animal husbandry.

However, he added, the communities should be restricted to the permitted area. "We cannot allow livestock keepers to turn the entire country into grazing fields, roving around with their cattle and destroying the environment," he said.

"As Tanzanians we are seen as tolerant people. There is no need for us to fight each other over land," the premier stressed.

Manyara regional leaders pointed out to the premier that the number of livestock in the region had already outstripped the land’s carrying capacity.

Statistics provided by the regional secretariat indicated that in Hanang, the number of cattle had outstripped the land’s carrying capacity by 6.2 percent, while in Mbulu the figure was up by 5.8 percent.

In Babati Rural District, the number of cattle was above carrying capacity by 3.4 percent, in Kiteto the figure was higher by 1.3 percent and in Simanjiro the cattle number exceeded the carrying capacity by 0.95 percent.

Lowassa appealed to local leaders to make people accept the fact that "the size of land will always remain the same. The option for them is to change their lifestyle, including de-stocking livestock."

Some officials in the delegation, including the Manyara Regional Commissioner, Anatoly Tarimo, however, said de-stocking was a difficult concept for livestock keepers to understand.

In April, farmers and livestock keepers were also ordered to relocate from mountainous areas around Mount Kilimanjaro and in river basins in the south of the country as part of wide-ranging environmental protection measures.

jku/mw