Tanzania: Tanzania's Indigenous Communities Racing to Secure Land Eyed by Investors

Aug 5, 2018 | Kizito Makoye, In Depth News
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Tanzania has attracted huge interest as a destination for large-scale agricultural investment due to sufficient land and cheap labour. While farmers use swathes of land for growing crops, fishing and animal keeping, they rarely have documented evidence to prove ownership. For the communities, upholding land rights means possessing documented evidence which secures tenure and can also be used as collateral for securing bank loans. As traditional laws that once protected village land weaken, indigenous communities and farmers have repeatedly lost chunks of land in what analysts say is a huge land grabbing facilitated by foreign investors.