In 1951, British colonial administrators in Tanganyika initiated the Masai
Development Plan (MDP), a five-year plan whose seemingly innocuous
objectives were to build more water supplies, clear tsetse infested bush and
experiment with grazing controls and fodder production in a small pilot
scheme. But the project was the product of broader British agendas to
reassert the legitimacy of empire and rebuild the post-war economy at home
and abroad. These modernization agendas reflected a shift in the racialized
ethnic premises undergirding the colonial project. Whereas early colonial
rule and development had depended on the creation, maintenance and
exploitation of ethnic distinctions to institute indirect rule, ethnic differences
were now perceived as barriers to modernization. Ethnic groups like Maasai,
who had been the target of protectionist sentiments in prior years, were now
the focus of heightened attempts by the state to coerce them to adopt modern
economic ways. Ironically, however, ethnic differences were both disavowed
and reinforced by the plan, for although it was designed to overcome cultural
barriers by economic means, it was framed, as its title suggests, by ethnic
assumptions about what problems ‘the Maasai’ (as opposed to other ethnic
groups) faced in terms of their development.
Despite its claims to merely address technical problems, the MDP was
therefore deeply intertwined with colonial imperatives to order, control and
compel the progress of their most unruly subjects. At issue were the land,
labor, livestock and livelihoods of Maasai people, as well as contested visions
of poverty, prosperity and progress. As such, the project served to facilitate,
justify and consolidate the expansion of state control into numerous realms
of Maasai life and its implementation became the site of deep contestation
between administrators and Maasai. Designed in part to build confidence
among Maasai in government and development, the project backfired, failing
to meet its own objectives and, more ominously, fueling anti-colonial
mobilization.