Background
The Kenya Wildlife Conservancies Association (KWCA) is a national landowner led membership organisation, established in 2013 to serve the interests and collective voice of over 160 community and private conservancies. KWCA works to create an enabling environment for conservancies to thrive by advocating for the right policies, laws and incentives and supporting them through information sharing, and capacity building. KWCA recognises that conservancies represent a strong mechanism to promote wildlife stewardship and custodianship by indigenous people, local communities and landowners that share land with wildlife.
Kenya’s wildlife conservation sector, including wildlife conservancies, relies heavily on tourism and tourism revenues to support core operations and conservation interventions. However, tourism investments and revenues from wildlife conservancies remain largely modest. For example, the Kenya’s tourism sector generated Ksh 99.7 billion in 2016 but the share of tourism income earned by conservancies amounted to a modest 1.3 percent. Moreover, only 69 conservancies out of the 160 Kenyan conservancies host a total of 131 tourism facilities and a total of 2,510 beds.
This status of tourism within wildlife conservancies present opportunities and challenges in equal measure. The modest tourism investment within the conservancies present considerable potential and scope for expansion. On the other hand, over-reliance on tourism as the major source of revenue has subjected the sector to external shocks such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which together with the measures to control its spread, has brought international tourism to a sudden halt consequently depriving wildlife conservancies the necessary resources required to secure conservation space and minimise threats to Kenya’s iconic wildlife as well as providing social outcomes to the conservancy communities.
KWCA has embarked on a journey to identify and document potential wildlife conservation compatible investment opportunities within conservancies with a view of linking such opportunities to the private sector for improved income and resilience. The need for financial sustainability among KWCA member conservancies is anchored on the organisations Strategic Plan 2019-2023 and KWCA’s conservancies Marketing Strategy.
In the foregoing, KWCA invites expression of interests from qualified consultants to develop conservancies investment prospectus for its member conservancies.
The Scope of Consultancy
The overall goal of this consultancy is to improve financial sustainability in wildlife conservancies by identifying and documenting potential investment opportunities within conservancies across KWCA’s conservation landscapes.
The above goal shall be achieved through the following approaches and tasks:
- Review conservancy management plans and other relevant literature to identify reported investment opportunities;
- Engage conservancy leaders, KWCA Regional Associations and key investors to assess and ascertain investment opportunities and constraints within conservancies.
- Analyze proposed potential investments (Tourism and Non-tourism enterprises) opportunities identified and prioritize based on factors such as diversity, potential for success and benefits to the conservancies and communities.
- Design and develop an Investment Prospectus which is representative of the KWCA’s conservancies landscape.
Qualification and Experience
KWCA seeks to contract a consultant with:
- Proven technical knowledge and adequate experience in conservancies, community-based conservation, tourism product development, tourism marketing or any other relevant field.
- Analytical skills and capacity to generate quantitative and qualitative data and information;
- Creative writing, communication and presentation of information and data
Deliverables
- A detailed work plan outlining processes, activities and timeline
- A draft Investment Prospectus for KWCA’s review.
- A final Investment Prospectus
Submission of Expression of interest
Interested person(s)/firm should submit expression of interest, attach profile of the consultant/firm including experience in handling similar assignments and a proposal on delivery of the task, that includes a work plan and budget to [email protected] on or before August 2nd, 2022
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