In 1951, British colonial administrators in Tanganyika initiated the Masai Development Plan (MDP), a five-year plan whose seemingly innocuous objectives were to build more water supplies, clear tsetse infested bush and experiment with grazing controls and fodder production in a small pilot scheme. But the project was the product of broader British agendas to reassert the legitimacy of empire and rebuild the post-war economy at home and abroad. These modernization agendas reflected a shift in the racialized ethnic premises undergirding the colonial project. Whereas early colonial rule and development had depended on the creation, maintenance and exploitation of ethnic distinctions to institute indirect rule, ethnic differences were now perceived as barriers to modernization. Ethnic groups like Maasai, who had been the target of protectionist sentiments in prior years, were now the focus of heightened attempts by the state to coerce them to adopt modern economic ways. Ironically, however, ethnic differences were both disavowed and reinforced by the plan, for although it was designed to overcome cultural barriers by economic means, it was framed, as its title suggests, by ethnic assumptions about what problems ‘the Maasai’ (as opposed to other ethnic groups) faced in terms of their development.

Despite its claims to merely address technical problems, the MDP was therefore deeply intertwined with colonial imperatives to order, control and compel the progress of their most unruly subjects. At issue were the land, labor, livestock and livelihoods of Maasai people, as well as contested visions of poverty, prosperity and progress. As such, the project served to facilitate, justify and consolidate the expansion of state control into numerous realms of Maasai life and its implementation became the site of deep contestation between administrators and Maasai. Designed in part to build confidence among Maasai in government and development, the project backfired, failing to meet its own objectives and, more ominously, fueling anti-colonial mobilization.