Cover photo: Datoga herders in Handeni,northeastern Tanzania. Photo by Diana Taremwa-Karakire.
In the flat plains of the northeastern Tanzania district of Handeni, Ike Emoilit points to a flattened field of red earth that was once the burial place of his father, but which has since been excavated to pave the way for the construction of Africa’s longest crude oil pipeline.
Like many members of the Masaai Indigenous community in this remote district, Emoilit is shocked that the developers of the 900-mile East African Crude Oil Pipeline EACOP embarked on the mass exhumation of graves to clear the way for this controversial $5bn fossil fuel project.
“It is unheard of in our culture to exhume a dead body,” said the 45-year-old Emoilit. “But they refused to listen to our pleas.”
The allegations are the latest in a long line of grievances from communities in Uganda and Tanzania whose lives and livelihoods have been upended by the pipeline, a joint venture between French oil major TotalEnergies, China National Offshore Oil Corporation and the national oil companies of Uganda and Tanzania. The project will result in 379m tonnes of climate-heating pollution, according to one expert assessment, more than 25 times the combined annual emissions of Uganda and Tanzania.
Several studies by human rights and environmental groups have found that the pipeline, which annually could transport up to 90 million barrels of crude oil extracted from a biodiverse national park on Uganda’s western border to the Tanzanian port of Tanga, has deprived Indigenous communities of grazing land, ancestral territories, and their livelihoods.
Herders in Handeni, northeastern Tanzania. Photo by Diana Taremwa-Karakire
“The developers of EACOP have shown a systematic failure to respect Indigenous people and their rights. It’s appalling,” said Edward Porokwa, executive director of Pastoralists Indigenous Non-Governmental Organisations Forum (Pingo’s Forum), a Tanzanian coalition that advocates for the rights of Indigenous pastoralist and hunter-gatherer communities.
Meanwhile, authorities have tried to crush peaceful protests against the fossil fuel pipeline by youth climate activists, with dozens of Ugandan university students arrested and detained for months on arbitrary charges that have been condemned by UN experts and human rights groups.
The latest allegations have surfaced as construction nears 80% completion, and Ugandan farmers and environmental groups prepare a fresh legal challenge, alleging that the pipeline violates the Ugandan constitution, will accelerate climate and threatens their livelihood, to halt the project, this time in the UK where the pipeline company EACOP Ltd is registered.
In Tanzania, the pipeline cuts through eight regions, with the most serious alleged violations—exumed graves and flattened cultural sites—reported in Manyara, Tanga, Dodoma, and Tabora.
In Maasai culture, after an elder dies their body is anointed with the fat from a freshly slaughtered bull to help usher him into the afterlife. During the mourning period, his family, friends, and relatives feast on the beef to receive blessings. The deceased is then buried near the kraal, a traditional Maasai cattle enclosure close to the homestead, where they are expected to remain undisturbed eternally.
A kraal which is a traditional Maasai cattle enclosure close to the homestead which also doubles as a burial ground. Photo by Diana Taremwa-Karakire.
Graves have been exhumed along the route of the pipeline, according to multiple people interviewed in Hadeni by Drilled. EACOP has ‘compensated’ families, but in many cases the money was not even enough to purchase a bull to conduct a culturally appropriate burial ceremony.
One early morning in November 2023, government officials, accompanied by EACOP representatives, arrived unannounced at Daudi Lemek’s home, where the remains of his father, uncle, and brother were buried. According to Lemek, they demanded he sign paperwork agreeing to exhume his relatives to make way for the pipeline in exchange for 2.5 million Tanzanian shillings (US$955), or forfeit any compensation.
Lemek, 49, told Drilled that he felt pressured into signing the document, and was led to believe the exhumations would go ahead regardless. A few days later, he received the money agreed but it was not enough to cover the cost of the burial rituals of three people. “We were basically forced to exhume our loved ones,” said Lemek while holding back tears. “This is not how things should be done. It is painful to mourn a loved one twice, especially when the compensation is nowhere near enough.”
In another case, Lukas Sonyo told Drilled that he willingly complied with the order to exhume his father’s body, but EACOP then failed to honor its verbal pledge to cover the costs of culturally appropriate proper reburial ceremonies. Sonyo said the family received only 1.8 million Tanzanian shillings (US$680), which did not cover the costs of slaughtering a bull and the anointing of the deceased with its fats. As a result, the family could only afford to slaughter a goat—a profound cultural compromise for the Maasai which left the family feeling "humiliated", he said.
EACOP denies the accusations. Flavia Nakimuli, a social performance officer at EACOP, said that the company had successfully relocated some 687 graves and 29 shrines along the pipeline path, taking into consideration the community’s varying cultural perspectives and norms.
“EACOP has a comprehensive cultural heritage management plan that was followed. Our resettlement action plan included community sensitization and stakeholder engagement,” Nakimuli told Drilled. “We also conducted socio-economic baseline surveys, as well as land and asset surveys and valuations, to be able to fully and adequately compensate people.
According to the EACOP website, 9,927 people in Tanzania have been directly impacted by compulsory land acquisition along the pipeline route. The company says compensation agreements have been signed with 9,877 of them, while payments have been made to 9,875 people.
But Paine Mako, the executive director of Tanzania’s Ujamaa Community Resource Team, an advocacy group, said formalizing land tenure through customary certificates is the only way to protect Indigenous people from such alleged abuses.
“With land ownership, these people would have better bargaining power and the ability to resist some of the pressures,” Mako told Drilled.
Another kraal in Massai territory. Photo by Diana Taremwa-Karakire
From the oil fields along Uganda’s western border with the Democratic Republic of Congo to the plains of northern Tanzania, EACOP-related damage to cultural heritage sites, grazing grounds, and sensitive ecosystems has been documented by local and international organizations.
In 2023 Human Rights Watch (HRW) found that the EACOP project had caused severe economic hardship for thousands of affected households through delayed and inadequate compensation, loss of land, food insecurity, rising household debt, and school dropouts among children. Many displaced families have been left financially worse off as a result of pipeline construction, with compensation for land acquisitions insufficient to restore livelihoods or purchase equivalent land, HRW found.
A 2025 study by Pingo’s Forum and the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs found that the Maasai, Hadzabe, Barbaig, and Sukuma communities who live along the route were neither properly consulted nor fairly compensated. The research suggests that the project has violated international standards of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), the specific right of Indigenous peoples to be consulted about any project that may affect their lands, territories, or resources that is enshrined in international law.
Meanwhile, new spatial analysis published by Earth Insight warns that the EACOP poses escalating risks to some of East Africa’s most critical freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity areas. While TotalEnergies has touted its plan for the project to deliver a “net biodiversity gain” in the region, EACOP has already been linked to flash flooding, water pollution, soil dumping, and the loss of community water sources in affected districts. Researchers warn that the pipeline could impact 158 wetlands in Uganda, 11 rivers and 44 protected areas including economically vital ecosystems such as Lake Albert fisheries worth $100 million annually and Murchison Falls National Park valued around $2.1 billion a year.
Amid mounting allegations of human rights and environmental violations, impacted communities have lodged a litany of lawsuits in Uganda, France, and the Tanzania-based East African Court of Justice. The latter recently dismissed a case filed by four civil society organizations from Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya to halt the project on procedural grounds, ruling that the case had been filed past the mandatory 60-day objection period and thus could not proceed, but the cases in France and Uganda are ongoing.
In a last minute bid to halt construction, a group of Ugandan farmers have filed a lawsuit against EACOP in London. The farmers are among those whose land was acquired for the pipeline.The group argues that the corporate structure of the project, with registration in the U.K., creates grounds for legal accountability there. Their legal complaint alleges that the pipeline violates the Ugandan constitution, will accelerate climate change and threatens their livelihoods.One of the claimants,Samuel Abedilembe,said EACOP acquired nearly half of his farm leaving him with too little land to cultivate crops to support his family.The money paid to him as compensation was insufficient to purchase an equivalent piece of land elsewhere and as a result , he now has less land and has lost around $400 in income every season that he would usually earn from selling vegetables and potatoes each harvest.
“How does EACOP expect me and my family to survive?”Abedilembe said in a press conference. “The project has taken our land ,disturbed the wild animals and changed the place we depend on everyday.”
The claimants have hired Leigh Day, a London-based firm known for environmental and public interest litigation, and are being supported by Avaaz, an online activist network, which has so far mobilized almost 41,000 donors to help crowd-fund.
Yet the governments of Uganda and Tanzania have consistently promoted EACOP as a catalyst for regional economic growth. In January, Tanzania’s Energy Minister, Deogratius Ndejembi, claimed the pipeline had created around 12,000 jobs for citizens across both countries and would boost export earnings and economic growth once operational. Uganda’s Energy Minister, Ruth Nankabirwa, has similarly described the project as a transformative initiative for East Africa.
Meanwhile, non-violent protests against the pipeline in the Ugandan capital continue to be met with police brutality. In April, activists from the grassroots group Rooted in Resistance, were detained and beaten by police after they attempted to deliver a petition to TotalEnergies local office in the capital Kampala. The arrests came just days after a Ugandan court convicted eight student environmental activists linked to the same group for being a “common nuisance” and sentenced them to 11 months in jail.
According to Doreen Namara, a lawyer with Liberty Probono Initiative who is representing the activists, state crackdown reflects a persistent pattern of repression targeting environmental and human rights defenders as well as communities affected by oil development projects in Uganda.
“We continue to see people punished for simply exercising their rights in the context of oil development projects,” Namara said. “The freedoms of peaceful assembly and expression are guaranteed under the Ugandan Constitution. Yet we continue to see people punished for attempting to exercise those rights.”
Back in Handeni, Ike Emoilit stands beside the flattened burial ground where his father once rested peacefully. The exhumation has left him with a niggling fear that his father is not at peace in the afterlife.“They told us this project was a blessing,” he said . “But all we have seen is loss.”
