COVID AND CONSERVATION
$168 illi Amount tourism was worth in Africa during 2019.
THE VIEW FROM AFRICA
From her camp in Kenya’s Westgate Conservancy, Shivani Bhalla, founder of Ewaso Lions, is describing the biblical rains that have brought the floodplains of the Ewaso Nyiro River to abundant life. “It’s pretty much rained all year,” she tells me. “I said to our team of Samburu warriors, ‘This must be enough now!’ And they replied, ‘No, you can never have enough rain. It’s what keeps us going.’”
At the start of 2020, wildlife was flourishing in wet northern Kenya. Just three months later, the sinister COVID-19 pandemic forced the world to shut down. Human movement was restricted, borders and supply chains closed and quarantines enforced. When international flights were grounded, tourism across the African continent collapsed. “We had a healthy booking sheet for 2020,” says Tom Silvester, founder of Loisaba Conservancy. “Then we lost $1,000,000 overnight.”
Money makes the world go round
According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, tourism was worth $168 billion to the African continent in 2019, when it employed 24 million people. Eighty per cent of tourists’ visits are dedicated to wildlife watching, which generates over $29 billion annually and employs 3.6 million people. The fees from tourists fund the protection of Africa’s globally important wildlife habitats, from the grass plains of the Serengeti to the swampy river delta of the Okavango and the tropical forests of the Congo.
Successful conservation is about people as well as wildlife, and park fees also provide socio-economic benefits – jobs, schools and hospitals are created from tourist revenue.
