Twenty-First Century Conservation in Africa: Contemporary Dilemmas, Future Challenges
Michael Bollig 2020
Africa has been at the receiving end of the monikers of others, from the pejorative ‘dark’ continent of the 19th century to be labelled more recently, first, as ‘hopeless’ and then, a decade later, as ‘rising’ by The Economist. It’s high time for Africa to carve out its own epithet. The Conservation Continent is a positive option for many good reasons. In a number of places, particularly in southern Africa, increases in wildlife populations and attempts to refaunate landscapes are readily observable (see Stoldt et al. 2020 on northeastern Namibia). The expansion of protected areas is spectacular if we consider the percentage of land under protection in single African countries – in Namibia 38 per cent, Botswana 29 per cent, Zimbabwe 27 per cent, Zambia 41 per cent,nand Tanzania 38 per cent (all figures UNEP-WCMC 2020).
