The Masai Villages Initiative, Kenya

Tourism can be a force for positive change in the developing world, but all too often the negative impacts on communities far outweigh the positive. Yet if community tourism enterprises can be linked into the formal supply chain in a responsible way, the benefits can be truly life transforming.

A case in point is Tribal Voice Communication’s groundbreaking Maasai Villages Initiative in Kenya. This initiative has reversed over 30 years of exploitation of the Maasai villages’ tourism enterprises in Kenya (cultural manyattas) by the industry’s driver guides. Unbeknown to tourists, Kenya’s driver guides take back the fees they pay directly to the villages for cultural tours, allowing the villages to retain just 4% of visitor tour fees. In this way it is estimated that $10 million p.a. ‘leaks’ out of Maasai villages in Kenya. Just imagine what the villages could do if they were able to retain this income.

Dr Cheryl Mvula OF TVC has worked with the Maasai villages in Kenya since 2006 along with tour operators, ground handlers and safari lodges linking the villages into the formal supply chain via a cashless ticketing system that ensures that the money that tourists pay to visit Maasai villages is paid directly into village bank accounts. With no money changing hands in the villages, the driver guides can no longer pocket these fees.

All villages in the Mara Triangle (the Western side of the Masai Mara) now retain 100% of tourism revenues from lodge-generated village visits and this have brought about much development in these villages e.g. schools, rainwater harvesting systems, health care. In March 2009, the initiative was expanded into the mass-market safari tourism area on the Narok side of the Masai Mara where 27 Maasai cultural manyattas operate. TVC is also working with the 9 Maasai villages in Northern Mara in order to replicate the system there. Amboseli and Samburu, the final areas in Kenya where village enterprises are being exploited, will hopefully follow when a funding source is secured to allow this.

The expansion of the initiative into the Narok side of the Mara is facing huge resistance currently from Kenya’s driver guides who are trying by all means possible to disturb the successful implementation of the new cashless ticketing system in an attempt to protect their ‘cash cow’. Underhand tactics employed include informing visitors that there are anthrax and Ebola outbreaks in the villages (so people do not visit) and taking clients to Maasai villages that have not engaged in tourism previously, and can hence be easily influenced, where the driver guides can still take their kickback. Tribal Voice continues to work tirelessly with the Maasai and the tourism industry in the UK and Kenya to overcome these issues but it is an uphill struggle.

Visitors to the Masai Mara in Kenya can really help end this exploitation by only visiting a Maasai cultural manyatta if they have an official ticket for a cultural tour to a Maasai village, which they can purchase from their tour operator (tour operators can purchase a stock of tickets from KATO – Kenya Association of Tour Operators) or from the lodge they are staying in. If you cannot purchase a ticket then DO NOT VISIT a manyatta as it cannot be guarenteed that if you pay cash in the village for a cultural tour that this money will not be taken off the Maasai when you are not looking!!