Wildlife crime is a multi-billion-dollar illicit business. It decimates Africa’s wildlife, and undermines economic prosperity and sustainable development, including from legal enterprises such as tourism. It also threatens social stability and cohesion and impoverishes people of their cultural and natural heritage. Organized criminal networks threaten regional peace and security. USAID's VukaNow Activity (“VukaNow”), supports shared commitments of the U.S. government, the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), the private sector, and civil society to dramatically reduce wildlife crime across southern Africa. The program’s emphasis is on strengthening enforcement, improving policy frameworks, and promoting collaborative action and learning to address wildlife crime.

Journalists play a critical role in raising awareness about these global issues. ‘Conservation' in many countries in Africa has been a topic riven with misunderstandings, poorly-understood nuances, and conflicts. These can be maliciously exploited by the unscrupulous and powerful, then amplified by a misled but influential media, causing significant avoidable damage to communities, ecosystems, and economies. Fair, accurate, and compelling news coverage of conservation and wildlife crime allows people across societies to make informed decisions about these key topics.

The African Conservation Journalism Program builds on Space for Giants’ existing work supporting journalists operating in Kenya and Uganda. The Program will create a regional network of 24 professional journalists working for established African broadcast, print, or online media in Botswana, Zimbabwe, Angola, and Mozambique, and support them to deepen their understanding and passion for covering conservation stories, and to widen the reach of their reporting both in Africa and beyond. We believe that stories of African conservation for African audiences are best told by African reporters, and that those stories also deserve global attention to bring more African voices to the international debate about conservation priorities and strategies. The best of the reporters’ stories will be republished by The Independent in Britain, with its global audience of 120 million people.