World Bank Allows Tanzania To Sidestep Rule Protecting Indigenous Groups - International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

8.11.17

World Bank Allows Tanzania To Sidestep Rule Protecting Indigenous Groups - International Consortium of Investigative Journalists: [Sasha Chavkin/Dana Ullman]


“It seems like a back door opt-out clause,” said Nadia Daar, a policy advisor for Oxfam International who specializes in the World Bank. “We’re concerned that this is setting a precedent.”

The United States, the World Bank’s largest donor, also warned in a recent Treasury Department statement that the waiver could set an “unfortunate precedent” and called the bank’s justification for granting it “unconvincing.”

At issue is a $70 million World Bank loan for the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania, or SAGCOT, a Tanzanian government initiative designed to encourage foreign investment in commercial agriculture. Some of the fertile agricultural lands that SAGCOT is transferring to investors are being cleared by evictions of cattle herders in the Barabaig, Maasai and other indigenous communities.

“In Tanzania, it is as if we don’t exist,” said Salumu Kundaya Kidomwita, 60, a Barabaig cattle herder living within SAGCOT’s Kilombero crop cluster. “It is as if this is not our country.”