Fiesta Warinwa holds wildlife and biodiversity dear in Africa

Fiesta Warinwa has 20 years of professional experience in conservation and in providing leadership at different levels in the implementation of Africa Wildlife Foundation's mission.

Warinwa, Director in charge of Policy Engagement at the AWF, was at the Forum of the Future to talk about conservation in an ever-changing Africa, on 5th November, at 7pm, at Rivoli.

Fiesta agreed to share her most important viewpoints on her work with Porto. and started by explaining that one of the key things on African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) is that its mission is solely for Africa, and that up to about 80% of its staff are Africans.

Fiesta Warinwa holds an M.S. in Wildlife Conservation and Management from University of Reading, United Kingdom. She currently serves as Director in charge of Policy Engagement at the AWF.

Also, AWF's strategy and programs in East Africa are targeted across various landscapes, including Samburu, Mau, as well as the Kilimanjaro areas.

Currently, AWF works in more than eight countries, which are divided according to priorities; the first priority countries are Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Cameroon, and the second priority countries group are Tanzania, Ethiopia and DR Congo.

"We, then, have specific projects for specific countries", explained Fiesta. "The two projects that we have in Mozambique and Botswana are mainly to support wildlife authorities in their fight against illegal wildlife trading, namely supporting authorities in setting up a canine detection unit, at the points of entry and exit, which are mainly the airports".

On AWF actions and their conjunction with country's legislations and how they can be harmonized, Fiesta stated that "AWF has three approaches to that; the first is "stop the killing", by providing direct support to the wildlife authorities and to the rangers that work in parks, and then the second one is "Stop the trafficking", where we now have the canine programme, and then we have the training of the judicial system within those countries, and finally the "Stop the demand" and getting into partnerships with other organisations working in the countries".

"But I must say that our action is determined by the interest of the countries, by the funding, it is also determined by the political will, for that we try to raise awareness through the government, try to guide the government, by giving them technical support and guiding them on the type of technical support, not just wildlife but also biodiversity", asserted Fiesta Warinwa.

As for a last message to audiences worldwide, the Director in charge of Policy Engagement for AWF advanced that "currently, most of the countries want to make sure they have good infrastructure, very good roads - everything they need, so we are headed to a direction where Africa is growing up, very fast but we don't want to lose the wildlife and the wild lands; even if Africa is a modern world, we want it to still thrive and make sure that communities profit from the land they set aside.

That's the biggest challenge. We would begin to identify the opportunity to establish a tourism facility and tourism investors, and that can generate funds and employment for the community, enabling the recruitment of members of the community to be scouts or rangers; then donors know that after the funding is ended the community still thrives and that the wildlife is protected".