The story of what is happening in the Rufiji River Delta today could be told from any point in time. I have chosen to begin in the early 1990s, not because that’s where the delta’s story begins, but because it marks a significant turning point from a socio-ecological angle —one that carries echoes of the past and warnings for the future.
Back then, historical floods had pushed freshwater deeper into the delta, transforming the mangrove-lined wetlands into expansive plains perfect for paddy rice. Delta residents responded with ingenuity and labour. Fields flourished. Stilt houses, locally known as madungu, were constructed from which farmers would watch over their fields avoiding flooding waters and man-eating lions. The delta fed its people. The people shaped their delta. A tough but imperfectly harmonious nature-culture co-existence was evident.
“I remember when rice grew taller than a man’s waist,” Mzee Rashid* told me as we conversed beneath coconut palm trees in Nyamisati village. “We didn’t have much, but we had enough.”
It was during this same period that powerful investors set their sights on Rufiji. The dream? Industrial shrimp farming. The justification? Development. But the community pushed back—loudly. I remember it well.
In 1997, I was a high school debating champion preparing to argue against industrial shrimp farming in Rufiji in an interschool debating contest. I scoured government policy papers and read articles by public intellectuals like the late Prof Seith Chachage. My late father even pushed me to interview a few civil servants that he knew. Looking back, I realise that I didn’t just prepare for a debate—I began a long journey of knowing and caring about the delta.
I first visited the region in 2008 as part of a multidisciplinary research team studying the viability of large-scale biofuel investments through oil palm. I’ve returned many times since—to study mangrove conservation, farmer-livestock conflicts, and community-based wildlife management projects. I’ve built relationships, followed people’s lives, shared tea and heartbreak. But as an outsider, I always had the privilege of choosing when to go. I’ve avoided the rainy seasons. I avoided the years of “security uncertainty” in the delta.
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Sadly, delta residents don’t have that choice.
And in 2025, they face a perfect storm of threats that could break even the strongest backs.
Numbers don’t lie
Let’s start with the numbers. According to census data, the population in the delta region has more than doubled between 2012 and 2022. This explosion is not just natural growth—it’s driven by displacement. Livestock keepers evicted from the Ihefu Valley in the Southern Highlands were sent to Lindi and Mtwara, but many found those lands uninhabitable due to tsetse flies and extended droughts. So they moved north, bringing their cattle and claiming space in and around the delta.
“They brought more cows than the land could carry,” said Mama Mariam*, a long-time farmer in Nyamwage village. “Then came the fires and the fights.”
I witnessed the farmers–pastoralists conflict firsthand in Ikwiriri back in February 2012. I was in the area for an end-line evaluation of a Belgian-supported community-based wildlife management programme in the Eastern Selous Game Reserve.
Our work was interrupted when violent clashes broke out, and the highway was blocked following police intervention. It all began when livestock keepers released their cattle into maize farms, arguing that maize was just grass—and therefore fair game for grazing. Furious farmers retaliated by attacking the cattle, sparking a wave of violence between the two communities.
This wave of migration pushed native delta dwellers deeper into the wetlands—onto marginal lands made more precarious by climate change and erratic flooding. Where once the water was predictable and seasonal, now it crashes down in sudden, extreme bursts.
Meanwhile, government conservation efforts—particularly for mangrove protection—have turned punitive. Community members have seen their homes torched and rice fields destroyed, accused of cutting down mangroves. Sometimes these accusations are true. Often, they are not.
“My son’s house was burned to the ground,” said Ali Juma* from Salale. “They claimed he was clearing mangroves. But he was building for his family—on land our ancestors have farmed for generations.”
Heart of the conflict
This captures the heart of the conflict in the delta: a tension between legality and legitimacy. By law, many residents are considered squatters in mangroves protected areas. Yet the state has long legitimized their presence through building schools, health centers, and roads to serve them.
“This makes our work incredibly difficult,” admitted one officer from the Tanzania Forest Services in Kibiti. “We’re told to evict people, but the government itself has rooted them there. And we’re told to relax our grip during election years…we should not agitate them, voters,” she reflected wryly on their tough job.
The conservation vs. livelihood tension is not new. But the consequences are growing more violent, especially as illegal logging and charcoal smuggling flourish in the shadows. Tanzania Mainland prohibits the export of mangrove products, but Zanzibar allows it.
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So the delta becomes a trafficking route—sometimes with the community’s involvement, sometimes without. Muhali – an anti-snitching culture deeply rooted in social sanctions – makes it difficult to apprehend and take action against the suspected culprits.
“I’ve seen people disappear,” Suzana* told me. “They were accused of working with smugglers. No one ever saw them again. No one ever asked us what really happened.”
To make matters worse, in recent years, Dar es Salaam investors have joined the land rush—buying plots, fencing off access, introducing agri-businesses with little consultation. Chinese-funded factories and processing plants rise rapidly in nearby places within the Coastal region. Development, we are told. Jobs, we are promised. Very similar to shrimp farming narratives of the 1990s.
But to many in the delta, it feels more like conquest. “We’re becoming visitors in our own history, ” said Hassan*, a teacher in Bungu. It reminds them of past traumas.
And then there is the flood.
Every April, the delta braces. With climate variability, rainfall has become unpredictable—no longer spread across the season but crashing down in violent, concentrated bursts. When this rainfall aligns with the spring high tide—like the one expected in the full moon period between April 13 and 16, 2025—the result can be catastrophic.
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Add to this the real possibility that the Mwalimu Nyerere Hydropower Station will release water upstream to protect infrastructure and generate power, and what you have is not a flood. It’s a drowning.
Last year, delta residents complained of record high water levels. Roads disappeared. Homes collapsed. Crops drowned. But you wouldn’t know that from the news. Coverage was limited. The response was late. Many were left alone, waist-deep in dirty water, holding their children and chickens above their heads.
“I held a child with one hand and swam with the other…there was no help,” said Asha*, a community nurse in one village.
History of adversity
It’s important to remember that the people of Rufiji have faced adversity before. They were at the heart of the Maji Maji resistance against German colonialism in the early 1900s. They survived many years of state neglect after independence. I remember how, growing up, I would hear Members of Parliament question—session after session—when the Kibiti-Lindi road would finally be completed. It became a symbol of Southern marginalization.
The south, and especially the delta, was one of the places where “bad” civil servants were sent as punishment. A place to forget, to exile.
Yet the people endured. They adapted to annual floods. They fished and farmed and fought for their socially and ecologically important space.
But 2025 feels different.
A catastrophic collision looms in the Rufiji Delta: in a few weeks, powerful seawater from the spring high tide will surge inland just as floodwaters from upstream—and possibly from the dam—rush down. The floodplains, already saturated with unprecedented heavy rains, won’t stand a chance. Neither trees, animals, nor even the tallest Madungu may survive the force of water meeting water.
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I’ve seen the roadside gullies quietly eroding the bridges and roads. I have had bumpy rides on tarmac roads full of potholes—feels more like a horseback ride. I’ve heard the whispers of rising tensions ahead of the elections. I’ve witnessed the slow collapse of people’s trust in both nature and the state. And the media silence is too loud. Delta people are left on their own as before.
I would not want to be there when these events unfold. As an outsider, my privilege has always been to leave. But my heart never did. I remain bound to this place by the stories shared with me, the lives I’ve followed over decades.
These are not helpless people. They are resilient, wise, and deeply connected to land and water. But even the strongest have a breaking point.
And unless we begin to listen, to act, and to prioritize justice—for land, for water, for life—the delta may drown not only in floodwaters, but in silence and inaction.
*Names of places and people and their genders have been intentionally distorted for anonymity.
Dr Baruani Mshale is the Director of Learning and Strategy at Twaweza East Africa. He can be reached at baruani.mshale@gmail.com or on X as @BMshale. The opinions expressed here are the writer’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Chanzo. If you are interested in publishing in this space, please contact our editors at editor@thechanzo.com.
