Akagera National Park is one of the biggest success stories of African Parks, an unusual not-for-profit company that has been mandated by nine governments in Africa to take over complete management of some of their reserves.
On a continent where wildlife conservation is often a low priority, African Parks is the only non-governmental organisation to run national parks. It oversees more than 10-million hectares in some of the most inaccessible places, from lawless Central African Republic to floodplains in the far west of Zambia.
It also operates the largest anti-poaching force of any private organisation in Africa, with almost 1,000 rangers, and builds lodging for visitors that range from basic rooms to $1,300-a-night luxury tents.
“Tourism to Africa is still primarily about nature and wildlife,” Peter Fearnhead, CEO of the company, said in an interview in Johannesburg. “What we try to do is build an economy that’s directly linked to conservation.”
It’s an approach that has been criticised by some activists, who say the fencing-off of land and the increased use of heavily armed rangers to protect wildlife points to the militarisation of conservation and criminalises people who traditionally hunt for food.
“The huge conservation organisations have a colonial model of conservation and scapegoats local people, who are hunting for the pot as they have always done, as poachers,” said Fiona Watson of Survival International, a London-based advocacy group.
There have been setbacks. In 2007, African Parks withdrew from two facilities in Ethiopia after the government failed to back negotiations with local residents to limit the use of the land.
In contrast, arrests in Akagera dropped to 19 last year, and there has not been a gunfight since two rangers were killed by hippo poachers in 2010.
Funded by charities and philanthropists in Europe and the US —Akagera was recently given a helicopter by the Howard Buffett Foundation — African Parks got its start in Malawi and Zambia in 2003 following three years of negotiations.
Today, it runs 15 national parks in southern and central Africa and is expanding into West Africa, including Pendjari in Benin, a Unesco world heritage site and host to the critically endangered West African lion.
“This model is beginning to develop where countries learn from other countries that there is a value to their park, so much so that they are prepared to invest in it themselves,” said Fearnhead, a Zimbabwe-born resource economist who co-founded the company with four others.
Income from tourism is still small compared to African Parks’ budget of $45m, which comes largely from donors. At Akagera, tourism revenue increased almost tenfold from 2010 and was on track to reach $2m last year on a budget of $2.7m.
Akagera’s most exclusive lodge can host a maximum of 20 people in inconspicuous green luxury tents connected to the main thatched-roof bar area by elevated wooden pathways shaded by trees.
African Parks uses weapons and technology to protect wildlife and has a mandate to arrest poachers and return fire. Still, the daily work of rangers in Akagera consists mostly of making sure the fence remains intact and monitoring the animals; it even has a dedicated rhino-tracking team.
In Rwanda, government campaigns to make people aware of the value of wildlife, including its gorilla population, have helped, said Alphonse Ntabana, who has been taking visitors on hikes around the land since 2014.
“I’m from the community; we are the ones who used to not really care about the park,” Ntabana said. “I could see it before and say, this land is good for grazing cattle and I couldn’t mind about the animals who live there. But since I started earning money from the park, I know the importance of conservation.”
There have been other benefits for the community, too. Since the government completed the fence in 2013, buffaloes and elephants no longer destroy farmers’ crops.
“When we first came here in 2010, there probably was at least one person killed per month by a hippo and a couple more injured by buffaloes,” he said in a small office with radio equipment and a display of snake skins.