This morning, I participated in the @TUIUK AWF roundtable breakfast at TUI Group’s Corporate Office EU in Brussels, Belgium, as part of my ongoing engagements in Europe. The roundtable also brought together MPs and stakeholders, and our conversation explored how the tourism in Africa’s nature while advancing its economic development.

Tourism connects the value of healthy landscapes to jobs, enterprise and public revenue. Its potential spreads across agriculture, transport, infrastructure and local supply chains. When these connections inform investment, tourism can give governments and communities a stronger economic reason to protect the natural assets on which prosperity depends.

For me, community leadership is central to making that work. People living alongside wildlife must be able to shape tourism development, build enterprises and participate as owners and decision-makers. Their knowledge and aspirations should guide how destinations grow and how the returns are shared.

The private sector has a significant role in backing this ambition. Tourism businesses can bring capital, expertise and access to markets, while investing in local suppliers, community enterprises and the health of the landscapes that sustain their operations. These choices help build destinations whose success supports conservation and creates lasting local opportunity.

Europe’s partnership with Africa can help take this further by backing African leadership and connecting investment with African priorities.

A big thank you to @TUIUK and everyone who contributed to today’s discussion. I look forward to advancing partnerships that strengthen tourism’s contribution to conservation and build economies in which communities have a lasting stake.

We’re LIVE.

The official launch of the Wildlife Economies Decision and Investment Support Toolkit. Hosted by @AWF_Official, @aluconservation, and Conservation Strategy fund. Follow this thread for key moments.

#AfricanLedConservation #WildlifeEconomy
#Conservation #SustainableDevelopment
#WildlifeConservation

Applications are now open for the second cohort of the AWF Geospatial Leaders Fellowship!

Are you a young African GIS professional ready to turn geospatial data into practical solutions for conservation and sustainable development?

AWF is seeking six professionals for this fellowship, running from March–December 2027.

Gain practical GIS training, expert mentorship, leadership skills and support to develop conservation tools for your organization, while connecting with a Pan-African network of practitioners.

Applicants must be African citizens under 35, hold a relevant degree, have at least two years’ experience in GIS or the environmental sector, and work in an eligible institution with clear GIS needs.

Eligible countries: Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, DR Congo, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Senegal, Tunisia and Kenya.

Deadline: 14 December 2026, 11:59 p.m. EAT (GMT+3).

Review the full requirements and submit your application:
li.awf.org/gis27
Share this opportunity with your network.

#AWF #GIS #GeospatialLeaders #AfricanLedConservation

In Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, silverback Muturengere watches over the Isimbi youngsters as they play and their mothers forage. Protecting their forest gives mountain gorilla families like Isimbi room to grow together.

awf.org/news/gorilla-d…

For Hellen Nakwang, a better harvest starts with healthier soil.

In Uganda’s Kidepo landscape, she is making compost and organic pesticides from locally available materials, bringing new life to her cotton fields and vegetable gardens. The results? Healthier crops, better e to support her family.

Her journey connects the soil beneath our feet with the future of communities and wildlife sharing this landscape.

Read her story: awf.org/news/hellen-na…

#RegenerativeAgriculture #AfricanLedConservation #Uganda #PeopleAndNature

This week, @AWF_Official Senior Vice President, Facheux T. Charly, and Manager for Environmental Social Safeguards and Conflict Sensitivity, @MokeDodo, met with Dr. Daniel Mutegi Giti, PhD, CEO of @NCIC_Kenya, to explore collaboration on human-wildlife conflict.

Lasting ple and wildlife depends on trust, secure livelihoods and institutions that can help communities resolve tensions over shared natural resources. Working alongside national agencies is essential to grounding conservation in local realities and national priorities.

Bringing AWF’s conservation experience together with NCIC’s expertise in peacebuilding, dialogue and conflict prevention offers an opportunity to address the pressures affecting both wildlife and relationships within communities. It also creates space for community partners to shape solutions that reflect their experiences and priorities.

Conservation’s long-term success rests on our collective ability to protect nature while strengthening the relationships that make coexistence possible.

#AfricanLedConservation #HumanWildlifeCoexistence #PartnershipsForConservation

Last night in Berlin, I began my week in Europe around a dinner table. The question I carried away was one I wish we heard more often in conversations about Africa’s future. How can partners help African leaders deliver on the priorities they have set for themselves?

Thank you IUK team for bringing African diplomats, German parliamentarians, business leaders, foundations and civil society into the same conversation. I appreciated hearing what people with such different perspectives thought it would take to make these partnerships work.

I shared a conviction that guides my work. Africa’s nature is not a museum. It is the foundation of a living economy. In Tsavo, a landscape roughly the size of Switzerland, communities are already building livelihoods and enterprises that depend on healthy ecosystems and thriving wildlife. They should have a say in how those economies grow and a stake in the value they create.

That is what African ownership looks like to me. Communities, governments and young entrepreneurs shape the solutions and lead the work. The private sector has a vital role as a long-term business partner. Companies can invest in locally led enterprises, share commercial expertise and connect those enterprises to customers and supply chains. That’s how businesses can help scale what African communities and entrepreneurs are already building.

I look forward to building on @AWF_Official’s work with TUI across the continent and to the endless opportunities that strategic partnerships like this one can open up for African communities and entrepreneurs to grow wildlife economies on their own terms.

I am honoured to accept the invitation to serve as Patron of African Women in Space (AWIS).

People sometimes ask what space has to do with conservation. My answer is: almost everything. The satellites that track rainfall, map wildlife corridors, monitor forests and help land are part of how Africa will protect its natural capital and build its economies. The question is who designs, owns and interprets that data. I want the answer to be African, and I want it to include African women.

AWIS grew out of Women in Space Kenya. Its second mentorship programme alone matched mentees from 9 African countries with mentors from 15. The talent was always continental. What AWIS is building now, through country chapters, the African Women in Space Conference (AWiSC) and the AWIS Blueprint 2035, is the institution to match it.

My role is simple. I will carry this agenda into the rooms where Africa’s future is decided: with ministers, African Union bodies and our development partners. Space, geospatial and Earth observation leadership cannot be a niche conversation. It belongs at the centre of how we govern our land, our climate and our prosperity.

Thank you to the AWIS team, for your trust. Let us get to work.

#AfricanWomenInSpace #AWIS #SpaceForAfrica #EarthObservation #Conservation #WomenInSTEM

This morning in Kigali, the @AWF_Official signed a five-year Memorandum of Understanding with Entrepreneurial Solutions Partners, LLC (@es_partners) to expand community enterprise across Africa’s conservation landscapes.

The partnership will begin in Rwanda’s Volcanoes Kidepo Valley. In Volcanoes, alongside the Rwanda Development Board (@RDBrwanda), we will support over 500 households affected by the restoration of Volcanoes National Park Rwanda, with the ambition to reach more than 3,500 households over time.

In Kidepo, ESP will build on AWF’s work with communities, including support for more than 2,000 cotton farmers adopting regenerative practices and planned support for shea production reaching a further 4,000 people.

By combining AWF’s conservation experience and local partnerships with ESP’s expertise in enterprise development, markets and finance, we aim to strengthen local businesses and value chains. The anticipated outcomes are stronger livelihoods, higher household incomes and sustainable jobs, alongside thriving wildlife, secure habitats and improved quality of life.

We look forward to working with ESP, government partners and communities to advance this shared ambition.

Happy #AfricaYouthDay!

Twenty years ago, the @_AfricanUnion adopted the African Youth Charter. Today, young Africans are not waiting to be invited to the table. They are already sitting there.

I have spent years working alongside young people across Africa and beyond, at in our fellowships. They are restoring land, building technology that respects our natural limits, and holding leaders to account. No summit closes without their voice, and rightfully so.

At @AWF_Official, we are glad to keep working closely with the African Union through an MoU that sets out clear steps for involving young people in every key activity we deliver together. For us, that is what meaningful engagement looks like: youth leading to shape the work from the start, not added at the end.

My message is simple. Without the youth, there is no meaningful progress and we have to give way for the youth to lead.

In my latest op-ed with @The_EastAfrican, I explain how and why: theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/opinion/gu…

#AfricaYouthDay #AYC20 #YouthLeadership #Conservation

It was an honour to welcome Hon. Joseph Africano Bartel @bartelafric, Under Secretary at the Ministry of Environment and Forestry of the Republic of South Sudan, to our headquarters in Nairobi today for a courtesy visit.

South Sudan holds some of Africa’s most remarkable natural ts wildlife landscapes cross national borders. One of these is the #KidepoValley landscape, which spans northern Uganda and South Sudan. Because wildlife moves freely across this landscape, protecting it depends on cooperation across the border.

Our conversation centred on a shared commitment to biodiversity conservation, climate resilience and transboundary cooperation.

We are grateful to Hon. Bartel for making time to visit, and we look forward to building on this engagement.

Community leadership is vital to lasting conservation.

Are you At #COP17? Join @AWF_Official and the African Regional Directors Platform to explore African approaches to community-led conservation.

27 Oct | 12:00–13:00 GMT+4
FPWC Blue Zone Pavilion, Yerevan

@emtambara, umbu, @juliemulonga

RT @AWF_Official: Education equips people to turn biodiversity commitments into action.

Join @AWF_Official’s Charly Facheux at #COP17 Educ…

Happy #WorldTeachersDay! Meet Patrick Kiminza, a teacher and Wildlife Club Patron at Ngwata Comprehensive School in Makueni County, near Tsavo. He's turning conservation lessons into action.

🧵

A new $49m Smart Green Village in Musanze will provide families with improved housing, infrastructure and basic services, alongside support to build sustainable livelihoods. The first phase is expected to accommodate 547 households.

@nsapatric, @AWF_Official Country Coordinator ts will be connected to business support, skills training, financing and markets before relocating.

AWF is partnering with the @RwandaGov on the broader programme, drawing on more than 40 years of work in the country.

Read more from the article in @NewTimesRwanda: newtimes.co.rw/article/39446/…

2/4 - Kidepo spans Karamoja and Acholi, with ecological links to Kenya and South Sudan. Elephants, buffalo, giraffes and other wildlife move across protected areas, community lands, farms and corridors.

1/4 What does conservation look like when wildlife moves beyond the park boundary? In Uganda’s Kidepo landscape, it means looking at the connections between protected areas, community lands and livelihoods.

Here are four things shaping that work: 🧵

As the countdown to #COP17 begins, 50 young leaders gathered in Kigali for Rwanda’s Pre-COP17 National Youth Consultation. They explored how youth leadership and community action can advance biodiversity conservation.
Their message is clear: young people must help shape decisions life, wild lands and communities. Participants developed a Rwanda Youth Position Document to share with the Ministry of Environment ahead of #COP17.

2/2 - The plan introduces a vision, ecotourism to grow local income, management closer to the ground, and stronger transboundary programmes with wildlife corridors.

Delivery requires the budget to rise from FCFA 6bn to 9bn.

Planning funded by @UNEP_Francais through @theGEF .

1/2 - A shared conservation vision begins with shared decisions.

@AWF_Official joined MINFOF to sign Campo Ma’an’s 2027–2031 management plan, shaped by 3 years of consultation with Indigenous Peoples, local communities, authorities, the private sector and partners.