Cows are the traditional partners of the Maasai people of East Africa. One of the most vibrant Indigenous societies on the continent, the pastoralist Maasai built an economy and way of life deeply intertwined with their cattle herds in the Great Rift Valley of southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. In their worldview, the creator god Enkai sent the cattle sliding down a rope from the heavens into their safekeeping. The herding practices of the Maasai, central to their cultural identity, have come under tremendous pressure in recent decades.

Since they arrived in the Rift Valley's savanna four centuries ago from what is now South Sudan, the Maasai have lived a migratory, pastoral lifestyle. Young male warriors are responsible for protecting the cattle from predators and herding them to water sources and pasture land. The flocks roam to new areas with the changing of the seasons, a practice that allows the grasslands to regenerate. Maasai women are in charge of milking the cattle as well as looking after the home and children. In Maasai tradition, land is viewed as a common resource, to be shared equally but under careful management that ensures its sustainable use. During severe droughts, for example, grazing may be extended into marginal lands that would otherwise be rarely used.

In some Maasai communities, traditional gender roles are changing. Women are selling wares at local markets, working as administrators with tourist companies and farming. There is even a team of all-women Maasai rangers who protect Kenya’s Amboseli National Park from poachers. They are called Team Lioness.

The Maasai have historically depended on their cattle in meeting all of their basic needs: food, clothing and shelter. Their traditional diet relies heavily on milk and dairy products, lean beef and other meats, cattle fat and cow's blood, on which they depend for their salt intake. Several cooking utensils and drinking vessels are traditionally made from cattle rib bones and horns. Cow hides have often been employed for bedding materials and for the walls or roofs of temporary shelters. More permanent houses include a plaster made from cattle dung and urine. This provides a free, ecologically friendly, sustainable, heat resistant and antimicrobial binding material. For many years they clothed themselves in garments known as shuka, made from cowhide. Some still use cow leather to make sandals.

Cattle represent the fundamental currency in traditional Maasai society. Families seek to accumulate large herds to demonstrate their wealth and status. They are sold and bartered in many kinds of exchanges involving goods and services. The Maasai have no central political structure. They do, however, have established social structures based on gender and age. It is a patriarchal society. When adult men pass specific rites of passage they graduate from Moran (warriors) to Mzee (elders) who make decisions for their respective communities.

Cattle are often exchanged as part of diplomatic relations between clans. Cattle are almost always part of a young woman’s ceremonial gift, delivered by the groom to the bride’s family. A man may marry more than one woman if he is wealthy enough and this wealth, of course, is denominated in cattle. Maasai families often include several households and many generations.

A community will offer one or more cows as a gift to a young Moran who exhibits exceptional bravery, furthermore, payment in cattle may be demanded as a fine for dishonorable or criminal behavior.

The Maasai have sought to protect their unique cultural heritage and autonomy from the time of European colonialism through the establishment of independent Tanzania and Kenya in the early 1960s and into the 21st century. In recent years, the greatest threats to the Maasai way of life have arisen from the spread of the commercial market economy. Their highly developed and ritualized barter system, organized around the currency of cattle, has had to give way to the wider commercial economy founded upon nonindigenous concepts of property and value.

Colonial rule took different forms in the territories that became Tanzania and Kenya. In Kenya, British colonial policies promoted European settlement and the development of large-scale agricultural estates. Fertile lands were allocated to European settlers for the cultivation of export crops such as tea and coffee. These policies limited Indigenous communities’ access to land and economic opportunity, and many Kenyans worked on settler farms under restrictive labor conditions. The movement of groups, including the Maasai, was regulated through colonial administrative policies.

In contrast, the territory that became Tanzania experienced a different pattern of colonial rule. European settlement was not a central focus of the colonial administration, and relatively few settlers arrived. As a result, large-scale land transfers to settlers were less common, and Indigenous populations generally retained greater access to traditional lands. These differences contributed to Tanzania’s comparatively lower levels of economic inequality following independence. In recent decades, Tanzania has pursued market-based economic programs to support national development.

Specifically, a shift toward private ownership and titling of land has had a drastic impact on the pastoral Maasai and their traditional methods of caring for their livestock. Vast areas of savanna that were formerly managed collectively have been subdivided and put to new uses, including private ranching, agriculture and commercial development.

In recent years, private individuals and companies have acquired land that was traditionally used by the Maasai for livestock grazing. These ventures—often supported through government policies—have developed the land for activities such as agriculture, wildlife tourism, conservation and game hunting. These changes have reshaped patterns of land use and access in regions historically managed by pastoralist communities.

Kenya and Tanzania have followed different economic models since independence. Kenya has maintained a market-oriented economy that encourages private enterprise and investment. Tanzania, by contrast, initially adopted a socialist framework guided by the concept of ujamaa, a Swahili term meaning “familyhood.” This approach emphasized collective ownership and community-based development. Now, both countries use market economic systems.

Though they had taken different economic approaches, both countries have contributed to the demise of communal land tenure and created new levels of economic inequality among the Maasai. With greater pressure and competition for access to pasture land, much of the available land has been overgrazed, reducing herd sizes.

The Maasai have also been displaced from large stretches of territory that have been designated as national parks and wildlife conservation reserves. The Maasai region has become a popular destination for safaris and wildlife tourism, bringing modest economic benefits to the area. However, Maasai pastoralists are restricted at most times of year from accessing important grazing and water sources located within these sites, bringing about major disruptions to cattle migration patterns.

The future of one of Africa’s proudest and most fiercely independent Indigenous societies is thus gravely endangered. With their pastoral livelihoods threatened, many Maasai have taken up other ways of making a living, such as farming or working in the tourist trade. The global economy of money and land appears to be supplanting the Maasai cattle economy.

The Tanzanian government has forced Maasai communities to leave their ancestral lands in the northern part of the country. Some of the land would be used as a hunting reserve for a company with ties to the royal family of the United Arab Emirates.

The government says the Maasai are being moved to conserve local wildlife. Removing Indigenous communities to preserve the environment is known as fortress conservation. It assumes there was some time or state in which that environment existed without humans. This is not the first time wildlife conservation has been the excuse for removing the Maasai from their ancestral homelands. In the past, the colonial government of the United Kingdom removed the Maasai from wildlife-rich lands in Tanzania and Kenya.

Many Maasai are resisting their removal through protests and legal action.