- The project was supposed to be a boon for wildlife-based tourism in the East African country, but critics say it came “at an enormous cost” to local communities.
In a rare move, a controversial World Bank-funded conservation project in Tanzania worth $150 million has been canceled amid widespread allegations of forced evictions, rapes and extrajudicial killings linked to the project.
The World Bank approved the “Resilient Natural Resource Management for Tourism and Growth” project, also known as REGROW, in 2017, and its purpose was to develop “priority protected areas” to increase tourism to the East African country.
Critics of the project, including the Oakland Institute, a California-based thinktank, claimed that it came “at an enormous cost to local indigenous communities” and that the bank was enabling violence and dispossession.
A 2023 report by the institute found that the Tanzanian state was targeting communities around a project area – the Ruaha National Park – with “threats of evictions, extrajudicial killings, and cattle seizures” in an effort to drive them off their land.
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