Nkomelo Village, Kagera Region, Tanzania.
At more than seventy years old, Hamis no longer measures time by calendars. He measures it by planting seasons, harvests, and the memories rooted in the six acres of land that sustained his family for decades. Those fields are now gone. Where cassava, bananas, beans, maize, and other crops once grew, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project has reshaped both the landscape and the future of one of Nkomelo Village’s oldest farmers.
Sitting beneath the shade of a mango tree outside his home, Hamis reflects on what he calls the hardest decision of his life; not because he wanted money, but because he wanted his land. “I never wanted cash compensation,” he says. “I wanted land that could replace what I had lost.” For Hamis, land has never been just property. It is food, income, inheritance, and identity. It is where he raised his family and where every rainy season brought the hope of another harvest.
When the EACOP project acquired more than six acres of his farmland, he believed the replacement process would allow him to continue farming. Instead, he says, the proposed replacement land came in scattered pieces. “They bought one acre in one village, somewhere else, and the rest in a third village,” he explains. “They could not provide one continuous piece of land equal to what I had lost.”
Managing farmland spread across multiple villages was simply impossible for an elderly farmer. “How could I cultivate fields that are so far apart? At my age, I cannot travel from one village to another every day.” Faced with that reality, Hamis says he reluctantly abandoned the idea of land-for-land compensation and accepted money instead.
It was not the option he wanted. It was the option he felt he had no choice but to accept. The compensation amounted to approximately 4 million Tanzanian shillings, roughly US$1,500 at the exchange rate at the time of payment. At first, the amount appeared significant. But by the time the money reached him, the value of land in and around Nkomelo had already risen sharply. “When I finally received the money, land prices had already increased. I could not buy back the same amount of land I had lost.”
For Hamis, the calculation is painfully simple. He lost more than six acres. The compensation could not restore six acres. The result was not just a financial loss; it was a permanent reduction in his ability to farm.
Across rural Tanzania, land values often change rapidly when large infrastructure projects enter an area. Increased demand and speculation can push prices beyond what many affected households can afford, making it difficult for compensation payments to secure equivalent replacement land. For elderly farmers like Hamis, the consequences are particularly severe.
Unlike younger farmers, he has fewer opportunities to rebuild his livelihood through other forms of employment. Farming is not simply an occupation; it is the foundation of daily survival.
Every acre lost represents food that will no longer be harvested, crops that will no longer be sold, and security that cannot easily be replaced. As Hamis walks slowly toward the edge of the remaining farmland, he points across the landscape where his fields once stretched. “This land fed my family for many years,” he says quietly. “Money finishes. Land continues feeding generations.”
His words echo a broader concern heard among many project-affected communities: whether compensation should be measured only by market value, or by whether families are genuinely able to restore their livelihoods. International standards on involuntary land acquisition emphasize that affected people should, wherever possible, have their livelihoods restored or improved after displacement. For Hamis, restoration remains incomplete. He believes that if replacement land had been provided as one continuous farm in a single location, he would have accepted it without hesitation. Instead, the scattered plots left him facing an impossible choice between fragmented farmland and cash that ultimately could not replace what was lost.
Today, at more than seventy years old, Hamis still considers himself a farmer. But he farms less land than before. His harvests are smaller. His future is more uncertain. Standing where his fields once began, he offers a final reflection. “I did not ask for charity. I only wanted land where I could continue farming. Development should not leave an old farmer with less land than he started with.” His story is more than one man’s experience. It is a reminder that behind every kilometer of pipeline are families weighing promises against lived reality, and asking whether development can truly be called development when it leaves those who fed themselves from the land struggling to recover what was taken.