The landowners and local communities that have lived side by side with wildlife for generations understand the landscape far better than everyone else. For this reason, AKWCA’s community and livelihood programme is grounded in equipping the local community to spearhead and draw direct benefits from wildlife conservation and habitat protection.

Conservancies Establishment

AKWCA supports community members and landowners to set aside land for conservation and establish conservancies, be it a community, group or private conservancy. We then continuously create forums that build the capacity of the landowners and community members to effectively manage the conservancies and jointly work on pushing for better policies that support community-led conservation.

The community conservancies are increasing the safe spaces for wildlife to roam as they migrate across parks and reserves and enabling the growth of viable wildlife populations. They are also providing the community with opportunities to diversify their income through nature-based enterprises and mitigate human-wildlife conflict by providing a means for the community to be directly involved in and benefit from wildlife conservation.

Nature-based Enterprises

AKWCA supports the landowners and local communities to come together and form tourism partnerships, which are enabling them to explore nature-based enterprises such as:

• cultural, educational and sports tourism
• carbon credit initiatives 
• launching tourism facilities, such as camps and ecolodges