Elite hunting and smuggling syndicate threatens Tanzania’s Masai giraffe

Calves of the endangered Masai giraffe and other juvenile African wildlife are being illegally exported from Tanzania to the Sharjah Safari in Al Dhaid in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the pleasure of Dubai royalty and tourists.

Human Rights Watch reports that the shooting and capture of animals, including the Masai giraffe, and their transfer to Dubai, are part of a decades-old syndicate between successive Tanzanian governments and the Otterlo Business Corporation (OBC). 

According to Nicodemus Minde, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, deep-rooted connections between the Tanzanian political elite and the UAE ruling class facilitated hunting concessions that have violated Tanzania’s laws. He linked senior members of Tanzania’s ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party and UAE royalty, who had been accused of poaching and transporting live animals to Dubai.

The Masai giraffe, Tanzania’s national animal, was at the centre of Loliondogate – a scandal that broke in 2017 after concessions were given to specific hunting companies, violating several laws. The biggest recipient was OBC, which registered in 1992 as a foreign company in Tanzania under the trade name Royal Safaris Conservation.

Operating from the Ngorongoro District’s Loliondo area in Northern Tanzania, the company had links to prominent UAE royals. Amnesty International reports that a high-ranking member of the Tanzanian ruling party, Abdulrahman Kinana, was frequently present in the Loliondo area during the hunting expeditions organised for the Dubai royals.

Three methods used to carry out the illicit activities have been reported. First, OBC hunters were allegedly authorised by state officials to kill the giraffe in contravention of the Wildlife Conservation Act of 2022. 

The Masai giraffe, also found in Kenya, is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Estimates of how many remain in the wild vary between 45,000 and 32,000 – compared with more than 70,000 three decades ago. In addition to trophy hunting, the giraffe species is also hunted locally for bushmeat. Some communities also use the meat to make traditional medicine.

Second, OBC hunters started fires to trap and capture baby lions, leopards and ostriches. The fires prevented them from escaping to Kenya or into Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park. According to Ted Botha, a conservation journalist and author, between 2000 and 2017, up to 100 animals were captured and transferred to Dubai weekly.

Third, after the female animals were shot, their offspring were illegally caged and moved to Dubai. Although the Tanzanian government banned the transfer of animals to Dubai in 2017, new reports indicate that this practice continues – and is threatening the sustainability of the Masai giraffe in Northern Tanzania.

A 2024 Amnesty International investigative report recorded incidents in Kirtalo and Ololosokwan villages in Loliondo, in Tanzania’s northern Ngorongoro district, where juvenile animals, especially giraffes and zebras, were being caged and transferred to Kilimanjaro airport. From there, they were loaded into cargo planes headed for Dubai.

In a recent case in Tanzania’s High Court, seven former OBC employees sued the company for unfairly terminating their contracts. As evidence of their work with OBC, they produced expired security passes that indicated they had been authorised to transport live wildlife to Kilimanjaro airport for onward passage to Dubai.

Records of Tanzania’s exports to Dubai in 2023 indicate that 72 shipments of “bushmeat” were sent to Dubai. Amnesty International believes these shipments of both live and dead animals were the product of those captured or killed in the hunting expeditions in the Loliondo area.

On the Dubai side, according to an exposé by journalist Diego Muller, most of the juvenile animals airlifted from Kilimanjaro airport end up at Sharjah Safari – where they are kept to boost the UAE tourism industry.

Even though Tanzania’s Wildlife Conservation Act allows for supervised hunting of specific species, the hunting concessions awarded to OBC that see the killing of endangered species and the capture and caging of juvenile animals break this law.

Given the prominence of UAE royal families and their involvement in illicit hunting in Tanzania, a global campaign by conservation groups such as the World Wildlife Fund and TRAFFIC, in collaboration with global advocacy organisations like Amnesty International, is needed. This could bring attention to the case of hunting concessions that facilitate the smuggling of endangered species to Dubai. DM

Willis Okumu, Senior Researcher, ENACT, Institute for Security Studies (ISS).

ENACT is funded by the European Union and implemented by the Institute for Security Studies in partnership with Interpol and the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime. 

First published by ISS Today.