Risk and Uncertainty among the Maasai of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania: a Case Study in Economic Change

For the last fifteen years I have been studying, working and living among nomadic pastoral people in East Africa. The focus of this research has been land use and livestock management; firstly among the Turkana of northern Kenya and more recently among the Maasai of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) in northern Tanzania. Understanding the sources of risk, responses to risk and evaluating the success or failure of these responses has been a critical component of this research. During the last five years (i.e. since about 1990) I have witnessed a major shift in the subsistence economy of the Maasai living in the NCA; during this period their economy has changed from one based exclusively on the raising of livestock to one which combines cultivation and livestock keeping. In this paper I want to examine how changes in Maasai subsistence strategies can be viewed as a response to the failure of traditional risk handling strategies. Cashdan (1990:2) defines uncertainty as 'an individual's lack of knowledge about the state of the world'. She also identifies two definitions of risk which are