Masais have been faced with loss of grazing lands.

(i) There was a scramble for territories in Africa among the European colonial powers. They divided various regions into different colonies. In 1885, Masailand was cut into half with an international boundary between British, Kenya and German Tanganyika. As a result, the best grazing lands were taken over and the white men settled there.

(ii) The Masais were pushed into a small area in South Kenya and North Tanganyika. The Masai people lost about sixty percent of their pre-colonial lands. They were limited to an arid land with little rainfall and poor pastures. From the late nineteenth century, the British colonial government in East Africa also encouraged local peasant communities to expand cultivation.

(iii) As cultivation expanded, pasturelands were turned into cultivated fields. Large areas of grazing land were also turned into game reserves like the Masai Mara and Samburu National Park in Kenya and Serengeti Park in Tanzania. Pastoralists were not allowed to enter these reserves ; they could neither hunt animals nor graze their herds in these areas.