World Bank project canceled, but villagers still face violence
Tanzania: A $100 million World Bank project was meant to boost tourism in Tanzania – but instead it brought suffering to local communities. Yet more than a year after the Bank canceled REGROW, violence and the threat of eviction still continue. Now villagers are pushing back.
For a while, there seemed to be real reason for relief: in November 2024, after international pressure, the World Bank canceled the REGROW project. At the heart of the controversy were threatened evictions and violence by rangers from Ruaha National Park. Our petition Stop financing evictions and human rights abuses in Tanzania – signed by 84,545 people – helped move that decision. We delivered it in person at the Bank's Washington, DC headquarters. Because the core demands were officially met at the time, we are no longer collecting signatures for it.
The Bank's positive decision has proved hollow. Despite an "Action Plan" from April 2025, rangers have killed two more villagers and livestock seizures continue — this after the Bank explicitly assured communities that farming and grazing would resume. More than 84,000 people are still bearing the consequences, according to the Oakland Institute.
“The plan at best makes a mockery of the Bank’s so-called commitment to remedy harms its financing caused,” says Anuradha Mittal, director of the Oakland Institute. Two new projects that were supposed to support the communities impacted by REGROW were “inadequate to remedy REGROW’s harms.”
On February 2, 2026, residents of Mbarali District therefore filed a complaint with the World Bank’s Grievance Redress Service.
A World Bank spokesperson, by contrast, told Mongabay that the action plan was “well advanced.”
The affected communities are calling for the 1998 boundaries of Ruaha National Park to be reinstated, forced evictions and relocation threats to end, livelihood restrictions to be lifted, public services restored and victims compensated. You can back them directly by signing the Oakland Institute's open letter.
We support these demands and will keep watching the World Bank's conduct.
The Oakland Institute has published this video about the situation in Tanzania.