African protected areas face complex challenge: balancing global conservation goals with local community needs

Africa’s protected areas represent a conservation paradox that demands urgent attention. While these reserves serve as crucial bastions for biodiversity protection and carbon storage on a global scale, their relationship with local communities remains deeply complicated and often contentious.

The traditional conservation narrative has created a false dichotomy, pitting global environmental benefits against local community costs. This oversimplified framing ignores the complex realities on the ground, where communities living near protected areas face restricted access to ancestral lands and vital resources. The situation is further complicated by the troubling colonial legacy of many African protected areas, which were often established through forced displacement and land alienation. Ongoing human rights violations in several protected area systems continue to fuel legitimate concerns about conservation practices that prioritize wildlife over people.

However, conservation organizations are increasingly recognizing that effective land protection must go hand-in-hand with safeguarding the rights and interests of Indigenous and local communities. The challenge lies in understanding what those interests actually are. While dramatic incidents of violence and forced evictions grab headlines and highlight the harm protected areas can cause, far less attention has been paid to documenting the potential benefits these areas might provide to nearby communities.

Moving forward, successful conservation in Africa will require moving beyond the adversarial framework that has dominated discussions about protected areas. Instead, researchers and conservationists must invest in comprehensive studies that capture local perspectives and identify ways protected areas can genuinely serve both global conservation goals and community needs.