Interview: “Pastoralist women have the capacity to lead”

le 08/02/2017

“After my university education I felt I had to work for change in my community.” Paine Eulalia Mako is a Masaai and a pastoralist in Tanzania. She works to connect grass roots and national level campaigns for pastoralists’ land rights. Much of her work is about empowering women to take the lead and claim what is rightfully theirs. Paine explains why women have been most active in their communities’ recent struggles for land.

How has Tanzanian pastoralists’ access to land changed recently?

There has been a lot of restriction of pastoralists to certain areas of land. There are several factors contributing to this increased restriction. But generally in Tanzania, large scale investment is increasing and this has a huge impact on pastoralists’ access to land. Most of the areas that investors are interested in (for conservation, wildlife management and hunting) happen to be pastoral areas.

Read the entire interview here.

Source : farmlandgrab