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The continuing struggles for land in Africa and the recent and dynamic academic debates about
conservation as land grabbing calls for the critical analysis of the complexity besieging land deals
that disempower local resource owners in different social‐economic and political settings. This paper
considers Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) in Tanzania as a new category of protected areas
with potentially continuing effects on rural community land rights. Using an example of uranium
mining and hunting concessions in the Mbarang’andu WMA in Namtumbo district, the paper
demonstrates how WMAs have served to release village lands for different kinds of private sector
investments in both nature‐based and extractive industries. Conceptually, the paper draws from the
body of literature on idle/waste land and the power relations to demonstrate how the existing legal
framework and the relations of power work to the detriment of local land users. Qualitative
techniques were the main thrust of data collection both in Dar es Salaam and during the fieldwork in
Namtumbo district. The main argument of the paper is that the change of village land into
conservation has entailed an irrevocable change of land and other resource tenure. Yet, the use of
WMAs and the economic gains from investments in them are not determined by community
members, but the relations of power at higher levels – the government ministries, investors (who
are often foreign to the community) and local elites. In particular, the circumstances in
Mbarang’andu suggest that the mining law lacks complete recognition of WMAs, which pre‐empts
any possibility for negotiations for community rights to mining investments or the associated social‐
economic impacts. Instead of empowering local communities, therefore, WMAs may continue to
serve the interests of those with the necessary capital and political influence, which engenders new
social regimes of power and inequality. |
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