Malawi disrupts wildlife trade, showing how pressure works
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In recent years, organizations working with local law enforcement in several African countries have significantly reduced wildlife trafficking, but declining funding threatens those gains.
Until 2019, Malawi served as a major transit point for illegal wildlife products like elephant ivory, rhino horn, and pangolin scales headed for markets in East and Southeast Asia.
A partnership between local NGOs, Malawian law enforcement, and analysis from C4ADS changed this, leading to the arrest of key traffickers like Yunhua Lin and the disruption of their networks. C4ADS began applying an organized crime approach to wildlife trafficking in 2014, recognizing the importance of complex logistics networks. The Wildcat Foundation supported C4ADS’s work, helping it build relationships with on-the-ground intelligence gatherers and combine their findings with public data to map trafficking routes.
This collaboration led to successes like the 2017 arrest of Moazu Kromah in Uganda, who received a 63-month sentence in the United States after C4ADS analysis aided prosecution. In Namibia, C4ADS support for the Blue Rhino Task Team has contributed to over 3,000 arrests since 2018 and an estimated 350 rhinos saved from poachers. More recently, in 2022, C4ADS analysis helped dismantle an ivory smuggling operation led by Beatrice Kasuba in Zambia, resulting in a five-year prison sentence.
Despite these achievements, C4ADS stresses the need for continued investment to prevent traffickers from shifting to less-protected areas and diversifying their activities. Future work will focus on identifying enforcement gaps in ports, strengthening international permitting, and improving judicial systems.
