The African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) won a Drivers of Change Award in 2007 in the civil society category for its African Heartlands Programme. Jimmiel Mandima, then director of the AWF in Zambezi and now the programme director of policy in Washington, received the award on behalf of the organisation.
He says the project has gained added credibility among local communities, governments, the private sector and international donors as a result of winning the award. It also helped secure additional financial backing from donors, he says.
The AWF has been involved in the evolution of applied conservation in Africa for five decades. It engages communities in the management of shared natural resources. Its African Heartlands Programme uses a hands-on approach to help equip local communities to practise sustainable land management to conserve wildlife and reap economic benefits.
The AWF identified key landscapes that are essential to conserve because of their unmatched concentration of wildlife and their potential to sustain viable populations for centuries to come. These “heartlands” combine national parks, villages and government and private land into large, cohesive conservation landscapes that often span international borders.
Mandima says the AWF is now implementing the heartlands programme in eight countries across East, Southern, Central and West Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe. It focuses on community capacity -building and leadership development, land and habitat conservation, as well as conservation enterprise Âdevelopment and policy dialogue.
“All these strategies contribute to poverty alleviation, community empowerment and innovative community, public and private sector partnerships,” he says. The programme encourages best-practice agriculture by local communities, which involves conservation technology and natural resources management planning, he says. It also helps to develop tourism opportunities, boost food security and secure wildlife habitats.
“The AWF continues to fulfil its mission to ensure that the wildlife and wild lands of Africa will endure forever for the benefit of local people,” Mandima says. “Enterprise interventions” include ecotourism and non-timber forestry businesses, such as honey and mushrooms.
The programme won the Drivers of Change Award for its efforts to unite communities, NGOs and government sectors to bring both environmental and human needs on to one platform. Mandima says this type of composite approach to civil society engagement is often lacking in Southern Africa, where a top-down government-led approach to development and poverty alleviation continues to be the choice of many organisations.