Who’s pulling the strings behind Africa’s conservation narrative and who should be?
Host a panel discussion featuring a fire ecologist, a sangoma/ ethno-ecologist, a Radio 702 host and a co-founder of Africa Parks and the debate is sure to get sparky.

Sangoma and ethno-ecologist Nolwazi Mbongwa would love to give the chop to “helicopter science”. She derides the phenomenon that sees cash-flush overseas researchers fly into developing countries, grab data and hurry home to analyse and publish without really involving locals.

She argues that context is king, that research must be grounded in a commitment to the communities at the heart of any study, that their proper consent is vital and that researchers must be accountable for the long haul.

“Conservation is not a colonist concept. It always existed in Africa,” says Mbongwa, a University of Cape Town PhD candidate who is studying wildlife use among muthi traders and traditional healers.

Mbongwa was among four panellists at a discussion entitled “Conservation – Who owns the conversation?” during the recent 11th Oppenheimer Research Conference.

The other panellists were Peter Fearnhead, the CEO and co-founder of African Parks, Radio 702 host andCarte Blanche presenter, Bongani Bingwa, and fire ecologist and Associate Professor at the University of Witwatersrand Sally Archibald.

The pipers

So, who does own conversation, or at any rate, control the narrative around conservation in Africa? And what about the foreign funders of many parks and other conservation efforts on the continent? Are the pipers from Europe, America and elsewhere calling the tune?

Journalist Bingwa certainly thinks so and says the muted voice of African researchers and environmentalists must be urgently addressed.

He pointed out that less than 1% of top climate research authors are based in Africa and that less than 1% of African media coverage was about climate change.

This dearth of African science informing decision-making, and the way foreign funding nudge the direction of African research, makes him cynical about the continent’s conservation narrative. 

“If the money comes from the Global North, it is already informed by certain perspectives,” he said. 

Hoodwinked media

Bingwa warned of governments and corporations hoodwinking the media and implored African journalists “to follow the money” when unravelling the complexities beneath conservation and climate stories.

“Where is that money going? Who controls it? Who makes sure that it does what it is meant to? Who funds the NGOs? Who funds the politicians? Who funds the positions that the lobbyists are taking?” he asked

He also stressed the value of “engaging with lived experiences of communities”.

He said that as a television and radio broadcaster for many years, firstly as part of Carte Blanche’s investigative journalism team, he had trudged in E. coli infested rivers, chased rhino poachers, stood on threatened dunes.

Most importantly, he said, he had interacted with people who felt powerless and voiceless when confronted by with “the machinations of big government, aligned, with corporate interests” which often sought to actively divide people in local communities.

He said if people in these poorer many communities had a voice, “they would stand boldly and use that often-used social political slogan: ‘Nothing about us, without us’’.”

Social licence

African Parks CEO Fearnhead drove home the well-known fact that Africa contributes the least to global warming yet will be hardest hit by it.

African Parks manages 22 national parks across 12 African countries.  Most of the organisation’s $120-million in annual funding pours in from the Global North, as is the case with many other conservation initiatives throughout Africa. 

But he said African Parks’ dealings with its foreign funders had been positive. The funders and the governments of the conservation projects they subsidised were equal partners in negotiations and held each other accountable, he said.

Though some funders felt they’d be able to influence policy, Fearnhead said it was the “sovereign government’s sovereign right, to be able to determine policy on behalf of their population”.

 At African Parks, he said, the differences between governments and local people are a far bigger issue than differences across the North–South divide.

“Even if you’ve got the government on your side, if you’re not working with local people and getting their support for what you’re doing, you haven’t got a hope of succeeding in the long-run anyway,” Fearnhead said. 

He stressed the organisation’s “social licence” to operate came from local people, and that African Parks would walk away from a partnership where the interests of the community were not being looked after, he said.