A VAST game reserve spanning Botswana and South Africa became Africa’s first official transfrontier park on Friday after the presidents of the two countries opened the conservation zone. President Thabo Mbeki and his Botswanan counterpart Festus Mogae inaugurated the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park at a ceremony attended by about 500 people at the park’s southern Twee Rivieren camp, on the countries’ shared border. The park — populated with buck, lions, leopards and birds of prey — covers 38000 square kilometres of the Kalahari Desert and is the largest conservation area in the southern hemisphere, according to a statement. It is a merger of South Africa’s Kalahari Gemsbok National Park and the Gemsbok National Park in Botswana. Three-quarters of the park rests within Botswana.