Whereto with institutions and governance challenges in African wildlife conservation?

African wildlife conservation has been transformed, shifting from a traditional, state-managed
government approach to a broader governance approach with a wide range of actors designing and
implementing wildlife policy. The most widely popularized approach has been that of community managed
nature conservancies. The knowledge of how institutions function in relation to humans
and their use of the environment is critical to the design and implementation of effective conservation.
This paper seeks to review the institutional and governance challenges faced in wildlife conservation in
southern and eastern Africa.Wediscuss two different sets of challenges related to the shift in
conservation practices: the practical implementation of wildlife governance, and the capacity of
current governance structures to capture and distribute economic benefits from wildlife. To some
extent, the issues raised by the new policies must be resolved through theoretical and empirical
research addressed at wildlife conservation per se. However, many of these issues apply more broadly
to a wide range of policy arenas and countries where similar policy shifts have taken place.