Our Partners
Our mission to ensure the wildlife and wild lands of Africa will endure forever is more than one organization can accomplish alone. AWF works with partners around the world to mobilize resources, design strategies and implement programs. Highlighted here are entities with which AWF has major partnerships spanning multiple sites, significant funding and many years. We deeply appreciate their support and look forward to seeing our partnerships grow for the benefit of Africa.
Bushtracks – AWF Safari Partner
Nearly sixteen years ago, inspired by the vast savannas and rugged wilderness of Africa, David and Carolyn Tett founded Bushtracks, a customized expeditions company. Today, Bushtracks offers personalized expeditions and itineraries throughout Africa, India and the Himalayas, and South America. It offers a completely fresh approach to customized travel -- developing regional, private air journeys tailor-made for discerning, independent travelers. As a safari partner, Bushtracks supports AWF’s African Heartlands program, designed to ensure that Africa’s majestic wildlife and wild lands endure forever. It also partners with AWF supporters interested in customized travel to Africa. Bushtrack’s Africa travelers also receive AWF’s field guide, information about ecotourism, and other information about AWF’s work.
Visit the www.bushtracks.com
European Commission
AWF understands that working at the landscape level — especially in transboundary contexts — requires long-standing and trust-worthy partnerships. That’s exactly what the European Commission has provided through its funding for AWF’s Scaling Up Benefits for Rural Area Populations (SUBRAP) Project.
SUBRAP is designed to empower communities to harness and manage their social and natural resources and thereby “scale up” socio-economic benefits and reduce vulnerability to poverty and food insecurity.
In January 2005, AWF began implementing an EC-funded SUBRAP project that will last for four years, benefiting the Kazungula, Zambezi and Limpopo Heartlands. Through it, AWF is showing that the best way to sustain Africa’s wildlife is to help local communities sustain themselves.
Visit the ec.europa.eu/index_en.htm
The Nature Conservancy
The African Wildlife Foundation and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) have developed a formal partnership to promote conservation and human well-being in Africa. Under this partnership, TNC will provide technical and financial resources to AWF to help support the African Heartlands Program. AWF and TNC will initiate this collaboration by focusing on two geographies: the flooded grasslands, woodlands and floodplain river systems of southern Africa and the tropical grasslands and savannahs of East Africa.
In a world where NGOs often pursue separate agendas, this partnership serves as a powerful example of how organizations can realistically assess their comparative advantages and strengths, and form real partnerships that share resources and produce more conservation impact for the resources invested—instead of duplicating or competing with each other’s efforts.
Visit www.nature.org.
The Netherlands Ministry Of Foreign Affairs/Directorate General for International Cooperation (DGIS)
AWF’s truly global support base is a recognition of the value of our participatory, integrated landscape-scale approach to conservation and people’s issues. It was because AWF made this approach operational that, in 2002, The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Directorate General for International Cooperation (DGIS) granted us substantial four-year support in the Samburu, Kilimanjaro and Zambezi Heartlands. Along with improving water use and making recommendations on land tenure, the DGIS grant provides help for the development of wildlife (tourism) enterprises, building the capacity of community members, creating human-wildlife conflict reduction strategies, and developing resource management plans.
Visit the www.minbuza.nl/en/home
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)
The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) is Switzerland’s international cooperation agency within the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA). The Agency undertakes direct actions, supports programs of multilateral organizations, and helps to finance programs run by Swiss and international organizations to countries around the World. In 2008, Switzerland earmarked CHF 2.21 billion for official development assistance (ODA). In its technical cooperation and financial aid to developing countries 2009-2012 focus will be on reducing poverty, reducing security risks, and co-shaping a form of globalization that promotes development.
SDC’s Regional Program Southern Africa 2005 – 2010 (RPSA) represents a shift towards regional priorities. With the updated Cooperation Strategy 2008 – 2010, SDC has renewed its commitment to supporting the efforts to address social, economic, political and environmental vulnerabilities in Southern Africa through a regional public goods approach.
The SDC cooperates with AWF on its WEALTH program, a transboundary initiative supporting Wildlife, Environment and Agriculture for improved Livelihoods in AWF’s Zambezi Heartland.
- Regional Cooperation and Global Cooperation
- Humanitarian aid
- Cooperation with Eastern Europe
Visit the www.sdc.admin.ch
United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
Perhaps no partner has worked more closely with AWF than the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Whether it has come from its central organization or through one of its missions in Africa, USAID’s strong and sustained sup-port has helped to shape the landscape-level approach at the very core of AWF’s mission.
Throughout our various Heartlands, USAID funding has enabled AWF to lead a landscape-level conservation program to provide opportunities for economic development.
In the Virunga region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda, USAID’s CARPE (Central African Regional Program for the Environment), Gorilla Directive and mission level support have allowed for the protection of biodiversity together with opportunities for enhanced livelihoods.
In Kenya, USAID funding of CORE (Conservation of Resources through Enterprise) is helping AWF lead a consortium of organizations to support conservation enterprises, and encourage wildlife conservation on community land adjacent to Kenya’s protected area systems.
In our Samburu, Kilimanjaro and Maasai Steppe Heartlands (Kenya and Tanzania), the Conservation of Resources in African Landscapes (CORAL/GCP) Program is helping AWF tackle conservation challenges at the landscape level.
And in Tanzania, USAID funding of Partnership Options for Resource Innovations (PORI) has led to some of AWF’s most celebrated successes — from the founding of the Tanzania Land Conservation Trust to the operation of Manyara Ranch.
Through these and other programs, AWF and USAID’s long-standing partnership is a prime example of what can happen when government and non-profit agencies work side by side.
Visit the
www.usaid.gov
United States Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS)
Since 1990, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Division of International Conservation has been working to conserve highly endangered species around the globe through its Multinational Species Conservation Funds. As a strong ally of AWF’s people-centered approach to conservation, the USFWS continues to provide support for critical elephant, rhinoceros, and great ape conservation activities. This past year, USFWS helped us to complete the first-ever large mammal survey in the Zambezi Heartland, and to address the problem of the threatened black rhino population in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater and Kenya’s Ngulia Rhino Sanctuary.
Our alliance with USFWS has been invaluable in helping to spread AWF’s conservation logic — that only together with the people of Africa will conservation be achieved. We hope to continue working together, and to expand our joint efforts to species such as great cats, rare canids and the bonobos.
Visit the www.fws.gov
United States Forest Service (USFS)
The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) is one of the world’s premiere authorities on the management of forest, soil and water resources—and AWF is proud to consider them partners.
Today, USFS International Programs are providing technical expertise to help us better understand the watersheds in our large-scale conservation landscapes. So many of our conservation targets are linked to forest and watershed processes, and we value the USFS’ help in addressing watershed degradation. For example, in March of 2005 a watershed assessment was carried out in the Zambezi landscape, combining stakeholder meetings with aerial reconnaissance. The results were reassuring — the Zambezi watershed is in good shape, although suffering from significant expansion of floodplain agriculture.
By linking the skills of the field-based staff of the USFS with partners overseas, USFS Internal Programs can quickly address the most critical forest and watershed issues. Wildlife biologists, forest economists, hydrologists, disaster and fire management specialists, and policy makers are among those who comprise the staff of over thirty thousand employees — making the USFS an incredible resource and invaluable partner.
Visit the
USFS website.
More Partners
African Wildlife Foundation is grateful for all our partners. Please click here to see more of our partners who work with us throughout the AWF Heartlands.
