Africa is home to one-quarter of the planet’s biodiversity and has a network of protected areas covering 17% of its land mass—including national parks, game reserves, and forest reserves—and this number promises to increase. More than 20 African countries have already committed to increasing the number of protected areas to at least 30% by 2030.  

Many of these current and potential protected and conservation areas overlap with the territories of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPs & LCs) who have historically protected these ecosystems through innovative governance strategies, collective ownership, and ancestral ecological knowledge since time immemorial. However, some of these communities have been criminalized and expelled from their territories, undermining their livelihoods and knowledge systems.

Capitalizing on the compromises made in the Kigali Call to Action and the IP & LC Declaration signed at the African Protected Areas Congress (APAC) in 2022, The Alliance for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities for Conservation in Africa (AICA) and the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) co-hosted a three-day Conservation Congress in Windhoek, Namibia on October 25–27, 2023.

• Read the press release
• See conference updates and photos.