Saving Gorongoza: how philanthropy can work
The story of Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique is regarded by some as Africa’s greatest wildlife restoration story. While the stories of philanthropists dropping millions of US dollars into African projects are legion, with some surviving, many not, Gorongosa is a beautiful tale of how philanthropy can or perhaps should work. By
The year is 2004 and a philanthropist parachutes into central Mozambique with the idea of donating tens of millions of US dollars, trying to make the proverbial difference, somewhere on Earth.
That’s not literally how it happened, with no sky-diving involved, but Idaho-born tech entrepreneur Greg Carr says when he met then Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano at Harvard University in 2003, the time was right.
“I sold my shares in my for-profit technology companies when I was about 38 years old and created the Carr Foundation. I was looking for a big project ... something to spend the rest of my life doing.”
Chissano invited Carr to Mozambique – at the time the poorest country in the world on the UN Human Development Index – to look for a project.
What happened next is like a private tour through the mind of a philanthropist with a plan and a bag full of money.
“I started studying Mozambique online and thinking of what I might do to help the country [create jobs, education and healthcare]. I was not trained as a conservationist. However, I grew up near Yellowstone Park in the US, I loved national parks and had always loved nature. I had been reading EO Wilson [the evolutionary biologist] for years.”
Carr said he read that Gorongosa National Park had been one of the top parks in Africa, but that it had been ruined in the war. “It lost most of its wildlife and all of its infrastructure.” And therein this people and nature-loving lad from Idaho found his passion project.
Chissano, Carr & Mandela
“Chissano liked the idea. He and Nelson Mandela had already spent a lot of time talking about changing the character of the national parks in their countries so that the parks were more helpful to the local people who live nearby.”
He said the two former presidents’ thoughts on “repurposing” national parks, making them more relevant to local communities and thus sustainable, were aligned.
It could be said that when Carr landed at Gorongosa’s main camp, Chitengo, in a chopper in 2004, he saw the park’s potential for renewal.
On flying back to Maputo and meeting with the ministry that oversaw national parks at the time, he proposed that they restore Gorongosa together.
He says they agreed and together spent three years working on a plan. Carr had proposed, broadly speaking, changing the “definition and purpose” of national parks in this century, especially in Africa.
Carr said “the creation of a green economy surrounding Gorongosa, to lift 200,000 people out of poverty”, was his key focus.
“We signed a co-management agreement in January 2008, initially for 20 years... since extended to 35 years.”
Seventeen years later, the Gorongosa Project, he tells me, is “regarded by magazine as a ‘human rights park’ and I am very proud of that … [because] it is the moral thing to do for the people, and the only chance the park has of surviving”.
Given the immense challenges faced by South Africa’s Kruger National Park (from where, incidentally, a number of animals were translocated to Gorongosa), and the roughly two million people living in poverty on its eastern border, I don’t know whether to feel hopeful or envious.
When I visited Gorongosa in 2007 (to produce a TV insert for Carte Blanche), I was swept away by the raw beauty, diversity and size of the park, but also by the size of the task at hand. The 30 years of civil war had ripped into infrastructure and communities with ferocity.
Any journalist with a few decades of experience of sub-Saharan conflict, and particularly recent South African current affairs, is familiar with challenges faced by the donor community (not least of which being misappropriated funds, especially in this time of Covid-19).
While filming villagers rebuilding the infrastructure at the park’s Chitengo main camp in 2007, in the process regaining a semblance of pride and identity, I tried to picture the scene maybe 50 years down the line. This was a noble philanthropic exercise, but was it sustainable?
I’m not sure if I asked Carr back in 2007, so I took the opportunity in a recent interview.
“It will probably be profitable in about seven years,” says the former telecommunications entrepreneur, “and it will be the largest employer in Sofala
[province]”.
The business model and coffee
He described the model his team employed to effect the redemption and resurrection of a sustainable venture, explaining that it is split into two halves.
“The Gorongosa Trust is the for-profit venture, which holds the shares of for-profit green companies: tourism, coffee, honey, cashew and forestry ... to create local sustainable jobs. Then, the trust gives all of its profits back to the Gorongosa Project, a non-profit, which manages the park, our community work, helping schools ... and with healthcare and education.”
On Gorongosa’s 60th birthday on 23 July 2020, the Idaho philanthropist announced that the trust and its donors would be building 60 more primary schools to celebrate the 60th birthday. Carr is a big believer in the upliftment of rural women.
According to Matt Jordan, Gorongosa’s Director of Sustainable Development, “Greg [Carr] is driven by a vision of the future.
“In his vision, the 200,000 people living around the park are thriving ... the girls around the park are all in school and are allowed to grow up without the risk of being married off as teenagers.”
Carr’s commitment to the upliftment of women in a traditionally patriarchal environment is reflected in one of the coffee brands now produced as part of the Gorongosa agricultural initiatives overseen by Jordan. With three blends producing medium and dark roast beans, Girls Run The World will soon sit alongside Elephants Never Forget and Speak for The Trees in premium UK retailer Waitrose, followed by some American stores.
With former Renamo combatants assisting in the cultivation of coffee trees on Mount Gorongosa (as a way of repairing the soil after deforestation), there is a narrative thread written all over the story of coffee and
this national park.
Jordan, who spends most of the year in a humid office in sight of the mountain, and who says he regards Gorongosa as his “home”, says he learns almost every day about new stories of the mountain, “old men telling me tales of a river I’ve crossed 100 times!”
A tale of two women
Carr tells the tale of two women who snuck up the mountain and watered the coffee trees during the war.
“Now they have good jobs processing coffee and working in the nursery,” says Carr.
With 99% of Gorongosa’s employees being Mozambican, only four US citizens and a few from Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Europe, this is a Mozambican success story.
Carr recalls how as a youngster he was given a copy of Wilson’s book by a neighbour, “and I realised that a love of life permeated our family”. (Wilson describes biophilia as an “innate and genetically determined affinity for human beings with the natural world”.)
Meanwhile, Jordan, an engineering graduate with relevant experience in the Peace Corps, says he grapples with a fundamental question regarding the profit-generating aspect to his job: “How can our story be told in such a way to create a quantifiable conversion, either for people making bookings or buying coffee?”
While Covid-19 has thrown an unwelcome curveball into the Gorongosa projects, his teams are pushing ahead with the construction of a new camp, Muzimu, for later in 2021, and the launch of a birding route.
Jordan might be pleased to know that this legendary Mozambican national park’s potential to position itself as an exclusive destination in a world where many rules are being rewritten is great, especially if the cyclones and marketing gods play fair. Happily, for him, Carr doesn’t feel any pressure.
Sustainability
“We do not feel that the Gorongosa Project ever has to be sustainable based solely on money from Gorongosa Trust. Many things in this world are subsidised, or receive public money because they are a public good. As economists say, they provide ‘externalities’.”
Saving biodiversity, moderating climate change, ecosystem services, according to Carr, have wide benefits.
“So, it is perfectly fine for governments and foundations to subsidise entities like this. Just like the Boston Symphony or any museum or art gallery etc. is subsidised.”
So just who will be the subsidisers of the future?
“I do not think donors are going away this century.”
He says the number of rich people is going up and the number of protected areas (any kind of national park, reserve, community conservancy, marine reserve etc.), is going down.
“So we should have more and more philanthropy available to us.”
The boy from Idaho, who says “dad took us camping and mom taught us to love flora and fauna”, adds that he has not spent less than $5-million per year on the project for the past 16 years.
“I plan to continue for another 25 years and I don’t believe the number will go down.”