Zimbabwe News

HARARE — By 6 a.m. on Sunday, the line at a water well in Harare’s Budiriro suburb is already long. It snakes all the way into a nearby street, and…

The first time Robin Naidoo mapped GPS data points to track elephant movement in Southern Africa, he was in for a surprise. Across the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), one…

Growing up in the village of Domboshava in central Zimbabwe, Edwin Tambara, the African Wildlife Foundation’s director of global leadership, recalls how the surrounding Miombo woodland was a pharmacy, hardware…

Scientists, communities and government officials from five African countries agree that the freshwater fish stocks in the Kavango and Zambezi River systems are in severe trouble. Delegates representing all three…

Zimbabwe’s Mbare agricultural market in Harare, the biggest local market in the country’s capital city, opens at 5 a.m. and bustles. Between morning and noon, traders arrive from different parts…

Elephants are known to be “ecosystem engineers,” altering habitats to suit their own needs, but this sometimes comes at a cost to other species. Hedging, or stem snapping, is the…

Ten years ago, says Mike Chase, the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area was one fluid contiguous elephant habitat. “An elephant could be in Botswana in the morning, midday in Zimbabwe…

MASVINGO, Zimbabwe — At the end of November last year, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Sinomine Resource Group chair Wang Pingwei walked into a lithium processing plant, construction hats firmly…

In the more than 10 years since Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe signed a 2011 treaty to create the Kavango Zambezi (KAZA) Transfrontier Conservation Area – the world’s largest…

Scientists have found many plastics are toxic, but activists say two ubiquitous polymers are the worst of all: polystyrene and PVC. Some are calling for not only a national ban on these two, but for a global ban enshrined in a plastics treaty.

A recent report from U.K.- and U.S.-based nonprofit Global Witness captures the details of how a new mining rush driven by demand for “clean energy” minerals can go wrong, reproducing…

MASVINGO, Zimbabwe — The weight of the world felt as if it was crushing Nyemudzai Jakiti, a single mother in Zimbabwe’s southern city of Masvingo, when she found herself out…

More than 14 years after being forcibly relocated from their ancestral villages to make way for mining in one of the world’s largest diamond-producing projects, residents of Arda Transau in…

Australian firm Invictus plans forest protection projects covering more than 300,000 hectares, or 741,000 acres, of indigenous forest in western Zimbabwe, which the company says will more than offset emissions…

Liberian forest communities were supposed to get a cut of logging fees. They say they got a sliver MONROVIA, Liberia — On Sept. 29, several Liberian communities affected by logging…

From oil to diamonds, offshore prospecting looms over South African fishing town DORINGBAAI, South Africa — On Sept. 23 and 24, 150 women in the small fishing town of Doringbaai,…

Nearly a decade ago, poachers used cyanide to slaughter more than 135 elephants for their ivory in and around Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park. In the wake of these poisonings, the…

TSHOLOTSHO, Zimbabwe – Two men crouch beside a pile of rhino dung, using their bare hands to break apart the drying lumps to search for the remnants of the animal’s…

HWANGE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe’s government recently concluded a conference to attempt to rally international support for the sale of its ivory stockpile. It argues that selling some of the 136…

BIKITA, Zimbabwe — Nothing seems to happen at the right time for Maria Mazambara, a communal subsistence farmer in Bikita, one of Zimbabwe's southernmost rural districts. “The seed we get…

The concept of "biocultural diversity" has gained wider prominence in recent decades as academics, institutions, and practitioners have expanded cross-disciplinary work at the intersection of human culture and biological diversity.…

HEADLANDS, Zimbabwe — Since Netty Joyce Mukanganise started growing tobacco 12 years ago, she and her neighbors have ransacked the forest near her home for firewood to cure their crop.…

HARARE, Zimbabwe – Women, children and the elderly are increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change in rural Zimbabwe, taking up a large share of the agricultural labor force…

GURUVE, Zimbabwe — To get to Nyamukondiwa village in Guruve district in rural Zimbabwe, you have to navigate through 170 kilometers, or 106 miles, of mountainous terrain from the capital,…

CHILONGA, Zimbabwe — It’s taboo for Elizabeth Munene, a 37-year-old villager from Velemu village in Chilonga, a rural outpost nestled in Zimbabwe’s Lowveld area, to cut down trees indiscriminately. “We…

With extreme heat, African wild dogs are dying at a higher rate, according to scientists. New research, published in Ecology and Evolution in June, found that humans are responsible for…

Contributors/Endorsed by: Colleen Begg (Mozambique/South Africa), Ethel Sharon Sillah (Sierra Leone), Moreangels Mbizah (Zimbabwe), Muyang Achah (Cameroon), Shivani Bhalla (Kenya), Thandiwe Mweetwa (Zambia),  Alayne Cotterill (U.K./Kenya/Zambia), Amy Dickman, (U.K./Tanzania)  Annsarah…

VICTORIA FALLS, Zimbabwe — A decade ago, what was supposed to be a one-off sale of 102 tonnes of ivory from southern African states raised $15 million for conservation and…

If people knew about pangolins and how special they are, says documentary filmmaker Bruce Young, “they might begin to care enough to help save and conserve them, and put an…

In September, the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (Zimparks) revealed that the country would soon receive a donation of gorillas from the DRC. Okapis (Okapia johnstoni), an endangered species…

The words we choose matter. Benjamin Lee Whorf, an influential U.S. linguist, theorized that the language one speaks directly impacts our thoughts; he is quoted as saying, "Language shapes the…

Rising temperatures seem to have made a southern African park less hospitable to the tsetse fly (Glossina spp.), the carrier of a dangerous disease-causing microorganism, new research shows. Named for…