At that meeting, a group of 32 African states, known as the African Elephant Coalition and including countries such as Nigeria, Benin, Chad, Liberia, Ghana, Kenya, South Sudan, Rwanda and others, rallied against the region’s proposal for a once-off sale of ivory stockpiles held by governments.

Information gathered by Mmegi this week indicates that other than differing opinions on how to manage the continent’s iconic species, the ‘Africa versus Africa’ clash is also influenced by outside forces. Powerful anti-hunting Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO) and conservation lobbyists are accused of using their financing of some African countries’ wildlife programmes and their influence over these countries’ management policies to bend votes in their favour at the CITES’ meetings. While NGOs and other lobbyists do not vote at CITES and participate only as observers, they allegedly tip the scales in their favour by influencing the countries that do.

While in countries such as Botswana and Namibia, wildlife management is largely funded by the state and through practices such as commercial exports of elephant products, in many other countries, the tight competing national budget priorities and meagre resources have enabled NGOs and lobbyists to occupy an influential space in terms of both funding and directing wildlife management policy.

The lobbying ramps up before each CoP and allegedly includes nefarious activities such as the bribing of officials with flights to the meeting, expensive dinners, and other gifts. Emmanuel Koro, a Johannesburg-based environmental reporter who attended the last CoP in Geneva, says he personally witnessed the darker side of lobbying. “In Geneva at one hotel, an official from one of the countries (name supplied) was calling NGOs and saying he’s stuck and the room has not been paid for. “The NGO representative apparently told him she would make some calls and within 20 minutes the room was paid for.

“Some of these countries, even in Southern Africa, didn’t want to attend any of the meetings that the region called to mobilise for the voting as a region,” he says. Under CITES rules, member states either have to finance their own participation in the meetings or if they cannot afford it, can seek support from the CITES Secretariat. However, the allure of sponsorships becomes too tempting for many, Koro says.

“Ahead of the CITES meeting, officials from the level of heads of wildlife and others get invited for meetings as far as Washington, their flights and hotels paid for as well as earning honorariums during their travel from the NGOs,” he says.

“I have even heard reports of NGOs approaching the officials and offering to support and sponsor their children at top universities in exchange for support.”

According to Koro, lobbying is not restricted to vulnerable African governments. He says even powerful countries such as the United States and those in the European Union, find themselves under pressure from powerful anti-hunting NGOs which wield significant political power and can turn the electorate against politicians.

In recent years, lobby groups have been able to get politicians to introduce laws banning or restricting the importation of hunting trophies from Southern Africa, legislation which essentially removes the market for these products provided by CITES to countries such as Botswana.

A trophy hunter from such countries who participates in a legal CITES hunt in Botswana or elsewhere in the region may have difficulty repatriating that trophy to their home country due to the change in the law.

Koro says the lobbying against Botswana and neighbouring states began as soon as Panama was announced as the host of the next CoP last year. “The voting has already been determined and whatever Southern Africa is attempting to do now is late,” says the journalist, who plans to attend the November meeting in Panama.

“No one is going to vote with the region and I’m expecting more than 80% to vote against Southern Africa because those countries have already been captured by the anti-hunting lobbyists.” After proposals from Botswana and its neighbours were roundly defeated in Geneva, the countries spoke out about the illicit activities of NGOs and threatened to quit CITES.

This time around, the region has made similar threats, although analysts have said quitting CITES would leave the countries with little or no avenue for legal trade of their animal exports, as the organisation covers all the potential markets. The potential trade partners under such a scenario would also have to quit CITES, an unlikely decision, given the organisation’s position in global geopolitics.

Botswana and the region, however, have also attempted to push back against the anti-hunting lobbyists. Ahead of the Geneva CoP in 2019, President Mokgweetsi Masisi lobbied both Angola and Kenya to not oppose Southern Africa’s proposals for a once-off sale of ivory stocks.

“As friends, as fellow Africans and pan-Africanists we (Botswana and Kenya) resolved to huddle in our differences and rather communicate them internally in Africa amongst ourselves and never go out and fight outside,” Masisi told journalists following his engagements.

“We remained clear in our resoluteness to not allow international NGOs or national NGOs and non-state actors to so penetrate us as to divide us because we have the resource, they need the resource.

“At CITES you will not see a Botswana/Kenya fight despite the differences we have.” It remains unclear which way Kenya or Angola voted, but the Southern African proposal failed.

Kenya, an influential member of the African Elephant Coalition, follows a wildlife management policy strongly dictated by conservationists. An academic document seen by Mmegi this week indicates that as a result of the publicity gained from burning the 12 tonnes of ivory in 1989, Kenya was the recipient of $150–$250 million in foreign aid.

“This large infusion of foreign aid allowed the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) to live independently of wealth generated from the sustainable use of its wildlife,” reads the document authored by Degeorges Andre and Brian Reilly from the Tshwane University of Technology in 2008.

“This is reflective of donor- and fund-driven conservation budgets, in which expenditures were not related to obtaining added value from the resource, resulting in failure to reach financial sustainability in addition to alienating landowners from conservation.”

The academics added: “KWS is the most extreme example of a budget-funded agency responding to political imperative at the expense of conservation and operational effectiveness, with some 80% of the expenditure on non-park activities.

“KWS was given too much money too fast without the legal institutional or managerial capacity to absorb it, while landowners were given too few user rights and the most valuable use (safari hunting) was banned.”

A local wildlife expert set to travel to Panama says CITES has become steeped in the politicisation of science at the expense of communities in Southern Africa who live with species such as elephants and are fighting to derive sustainable value from them.

“It’s very NGO-heavy and these organisations have a lot to gain because that’s what their membership fees are based on,” he told Mmegi this week, on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of his position.

“It’s a huge problem and it has become clearer every time we meet at CITES that the NGOs have such a hold on these member states that they have become way too dormant for the good of CITES. “The whole idea of CITES was for parties to work together on trade which is what [it is] established for. “But for NGOs, their role has become to move CITES as far away from trade and type of use whether the products are for commercial, spiritual, medicinal, or anything else.”

The structure of voting at CITES’ meeting, while restricted to member states, also opens up room for abuse, the expert says.

Ahead of the decisive votes on proposals, working groups, which include NGOs and member states, meet up and discuss the various agenda items, where the tone for the debate can be set. “In those working groups, you can make a serious impact in getting certain information to the decision-makers and the NGOs do. “The groups influence the decisions ultimately made. The working groups define the position and those positions inform the vote,” the expert said.

Ahead of the Panama meeting, NGOs have been releasing and circulating their analysis and opinions on the proposals to be debated. The opinion pieces have become another battle in the war for the minds and hearts of the voting member states ahead of the meeting.

IWMC World Conservation Trust, an NGO headed by the former CITES secretary-general Eugene Lapointe, who has been highly critical of the world wildlife trade organisation, is recommending that the Panama meeting adopt the proposals from Southern Africa and reject the proposals from the West African states and their allies.

Similarly, an analysis of CoP proposals released by the International Union for Conservation of Nature last week found that there was little chance that the latest attempt to upgrade the listing of regional elephants would pass in Panama.

“The Loxodonta africana (savanna elephant) populations of Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe are not small, nor do they have a restricted range and they are not undergoing a marked decline,” reads the report, co-authored by leading species trade NGO, TRAFFIC. “Therefore, these populations do not meet the biological criteria for inclusion in Appendix I.”

However, on the other end of the spectrum, influential NGOs have also developed their own analyses supporting the proposals by West Africa and dismissing the proposals from Botswana and its neighbours.

The CITES Secretariat, meanwhile, recently issued its own assessment of the various proposals.

The assessments, while tentative, do not appear to favour the proposal to hold a once-off sale of ivory stockpiles. “The potential risks of increased poaching or illegal trade in ivory associated with a legal trade in registered government-owned raw ivory stocks, or measures to address these risks, are not elaborated upon,” the Secretariat said in its assessment dated September 9.

“The proponents propose to retain the main restrictions in the annotation to the Appendix II-listing adopted at CoP14, but it remains unclear how any future trade in registered government-owned raw ivory would be conducted, regulated and enforced if the proposal were adopted.” On the counter proposal by the West African states, the Secretariat seems to back Southern Africa. “The information provided in the supporting statement does not indicate that any of the four African elephant populations that are the subject of this proposal underwent marked declines in their populations in the wild.

“The populations of Loxodonta africana of Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe are not small, and the area of distribution of the species in the four range states is not restricted.” The opinions issued by the different organisations ahead of the Panama face-off are all apparently based on sound science and the latest available data on wildlife numbers and their trends.

However, those who have observed the previous CITES’ meetings and the aggressive canvassing ahead of Panama say only one thing may matter in Panama. “CITES has become so politicised and economised and it’s all about the money,” the expert told Mmegi.

“In Africa, the Southern African bloc is not as strong as the African Elephant Coalition. “What the other African countries are trying to do goes against what SADC has been achieving with successfully managing its wildlife and growing the numbers.

“Those countries in West Africa have those draconian measures against sustainable use of wildlife and yet they are still behind and losing numbers of their species.”

While the proposal from West Africa is likely to fail as it did in 2019, Southern Africa is equally not holding its breath that it will secure enough votes to secure another once-off sale of its ivory stockpiles in Panama.