To help scale our impact, and invest in practitioners who share in our ambition of effectively managing protected areas through long term management agreements, we launched an “Incubation Programme” in 2018 with the goal of having 15 additional protected areas managed by select partners, spanning a further 10 million hectares by 2030.
With rigorous criteria and a vetting process, our Incubation Programme identifies other management organisations, NGOs, and operators who, with mentoring and technical support, can be assisted to replicate our model of delegated management.
Our guidance includes: the development of management agreements with government partners (if not already obtained); sharing our business structures, governance disciplines and best practices; conducting operational audits to identify gaps; and mentoring to build confidence and expertise. Incubation is conducted on both an operational and institutional level, with the support and exchanges adapted to the partner’s own specific needs and circumstances.
Incubator sites are chosen under similar conditions for how we manage our own growth, in terms of the potential of the landscape to expand under a management mandate to incorporate adjacent protected areas; strategic locations encompassing specific biomes, species; management synergies; and opportunistic growth by request of governments. We are proud to share the first Incubation Projects which include three NGOs currently managing five sites spanning 81,736 km2 (8.17m hectares).
For further enquiries about this programme please contact incubator@africanparks.org.
