In south-western Rwanda, the Nyungwe National Park is one of Africa's oldest rainforests. It is a hub of biodiversity, with over 1,000 types of plants and 322 bird and 75 mammal species. Ange Imanishimwe has made it his mission to care for this rich plot of land. "I was born into a very poor family," the 37-year-old conservationist told Business Spotlight. "I used to go to local forests to collect firewood. When I was seven, I found bird eggs. Some of the other boys wanted to take them home to cook, and it saddened me."
While doing a bachelor's degree in zoology and conservation, Imanishimwe founded an NGO called the Biodiversity Conservation Organization (BIOCOOR) in 2012 to help manage the park's ecosystem. He wanted to support those working in and around the park, beginning with helping the beekeepers diversify their products. For this work, he was named Rwanda's Top Young Innovator of 2012. Imanishimwe used the exposure the award gave him and asked several international initiatives, including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), for funding. "With that money, we were able to restore 120 hectares in the forest by removing invasive plant species," he explains. He also used some of the funds to buy cows, teaching locals how to care for livestock and milk the cows. "Mindset change and economic empowerment go hand in hand," he says. "You can't teach people to protect biodiversity without giving them what they need."
Learning and teaching
"In 2015, I was invited by President Obama to learn more about civic leadership and public policy in the US, because our work had impressed the US government," Imanishimwe says. He gained academic experience at some of America's top universities, including the University of California, Berkeley, Yale and MIT, in addition to practical experience at the Nature Conservancy in Massachusetts, a reserve that helps conservationists share skills.
Since then, he has gone on to set up an ecotourism project in Nyungwe and worked as a tour guide in the park. Dedicated to conservation, Imanishimwe completed his PhD in biodiversity management in 2022, and BIOCOOR continues its valuable work, with outreach programmes, internships in environmental management and expansion into other countries.
In 2021, he joined the UNDP's Youth Climate Tour ahead of COP26, sharing his experiences of forest conservation. "Our organization is trying to preserve the forest, while simultaneously influencing the economic development of the people living near the national park," he said. Imanishimwe knows there's still a lot of work to be done. "We want to mobilize more funding to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and to extend our work to different countries," he says.