Rainwater harvesting and storage project
August 2008 to February 2010

Background

As a result of a baseline survey carried out by EMAYO and the Kesho Trust in 2006 we identified the main priority issue for the pastoralist’s communities of Kibirashi in Kilindi District as a lack of access to water.

During a village meeting people said: “Water collection is always the women’s responsibility in pastoral societies. They travel several kilometres and spent much time to collect water for domestic use”.

The services that government provides like water supply, schools and health centers are found only in village centers. Pastoralists are not always able to access such services near their homesteads because they don’t live in village centers. Traditional ways of keeping animals are complex and as a result pastoralists need to be scattered widely across the landscape in order to allow enough room for everyone’s livestock to graze.

Subsequently, with support from United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), we implemented a rainwater harvesting and storage project in the area. The main objective of this project was to reduce the length of time spent by pastoral women on water collection and help them to use that time for other development activities especially around income generation.

Successes

Rainwater harvesting and storage has been welcomed as a good solution to the problem of access to water. It is helping to encourage the development of more permanent settlements since the tanks are immovable and this is increasing the communities visibility (led to the formation of a Maasai village) and ability to carry out other development activities.
Successes include

• 30 rainwater harvesting tanks of the capacity of 10,000 litres are constructed in Kibirashi, serving 1,788 people in 26 homesteads and 461 students in two local schools
• Formation of women’s groups with developed entrepreneurship skills that perform various economic activities within their localities
• Community people trained in construction skills to build rainwater harvesting tanks
• Improved shelters by introducing the iron roofs necessary for water collection

The project encouraged the community to establish a permanent settlement linked to improved shelters and rainwater harvesting tanks. They are now able to demonstrate land occupancy and are becoming more organized and able to undertake common development projects
The community has become aware of environmental conservation issues

Future plans

Although we reached many homesteads and people with the original rainwater harvesting project there are still more than 44 homesteads left without access to water. An additional 50 rainwater tanks are needed to fully meet the requirements of this village and to help us to expand into neighbouring areas.

The final project evaluation showed that the rainwater harvesting project at Kibirashi village acted as a unifying factor in the Maasai community and encouraged the community to settle and create a permanent village (registered in 2009). This is helping the Maasai community to gain political recognition for the lands that they use. Existing government policies do not recognise the communal and seasonal rights to land use that the Maasai traditionally use and so they have been under increasing danger of losing their ability to claim land use. Establishing villages like Elerai is helping them to make visible claims to their lands.

More work on establishing rainwater harvesting tanks in this community and those around could help bring more political recognition to many other such pastoralist communities.

Land rights project
From March 2009 and to March 2010

Background

Studies show that since 2000 conflict between pastoralists and other land users such as farmers, the government and investors has increased significantly in Kilindi District along with the rest of the country. Increasingly other users are taking over land traditionally used by pastoralists for grazing their livestock. The pastoralists are deeply unhappy with the situation because their livelihood is under threat hence conflicts develop between them and other land users.

With support provided for by Care International under their pastoralist basket fund programme (PBFP) we initiated a project to increase peace and harmony between pastoralists and other land users in nine villages in Kilindi District. The main aim was to raise awareness about the Village Land Rights Act No. 5 of 1999 among all land users as a way to minimize the land related conflicts.

We achieved this through facilitating workshops with local government leaders, pastoralists and other land users and by using public village meetings to talk to the local community.

Successes include:

• Decreased number of land related cases reported to police stations and tribunals
• Increased peace and harmony among pastoralists and other land users
• Increased awareness about land right act No. 5 of 1999 among village and ward leaders, pastoralists and farmers especially in village land use planning and management
• Increased access to grazing land for pastoralists through common land ownership and the establishment of closed animal routes to and from pasture land and water sources
• Improved collaboration between pastoralists and others

Continuing activities

Through the support of our donor partners ‘pastoralist basket fund programme’ under Care International in Tanzania, we are extending the project to a wider area in Kilindi district. We will take the program to an additional nine villages by March 2011.

However the land rights issue in the country between pastoralists, the government, investors and other local users remains extremely tense and pastorlists are in increasing danger of losing their rights to traditional lands. More support is needed to help us to tackle this issue at different levels and across a wider area.

Future plans

Promoting pastoralism

Among other things that undermine pastoralism is the knowledge gap. Policy makers and other influential institutions and individuals often do not fully understand or appreciate the value of pastoralism. As a result policies are formed which create inappropriate conditions for pastoralism to succeed.

We want to raise awareness amongst policy makers and others about the true value of pastoralism by creating a project that will help us to demonstrate it as a viable and productive livelihoods system for our communities in Tanzania.