By Opportuna Kweka

Pastoralism economy has diversified due to loss of their livestock. However, this is taken as a positive change by conservationist and developmentalists who for many years have viewed Maasai as conservative, resistant to change and their pastoral economy taken as destructive to the environment. Their argument is however challenged by political ecologists and anthropologists who have showed that Maasai’s indigenous knowledge has been a useful resilient mechanism for the semi-arid climate in which they lived, and that environmental degradation and lack of advancement are mainly caused by the fact that they have been denied their rights, especially cultural rights. This paper base on the argument of the political ecologists and anthropologist and drawing from interviews that were conducted with pastoral Maasai in Mnduli and Simanjiro districts and in urban Dar es Salaam provides evidence of the causes of loss of livestock to the Maasai, and reviews literature on the trend in diversification of the Maasai pastoral economy. Ten years after the author conducted a study on migration of the Maasai, new literature (see from example Homewood et al 2009) shows that Maasai are still aiming at the same, which is, restoring their lost cattle economy. Thus, this paper emphasizes the need to consider livestock keeping for a sustainable Maasai economy as one of the solution.