Central Africa
The Congo Basin holds the world's second-largest tropical forest. Some of the highest per-capita wildlife tourism revenues on the continent are generated here, against the backdrop of structural state fragility, transboundary conflict and a conservation-finance economy increasingly managed by foreign-registered foundations. The Corridor's Central Africa desk launches with Issue 013 on the Virunga model and the Kivu-Kinshasa Green Corridor.
Gabon protected 11 percent of its land and built Africa's last Eden. Tourism is 0.8 percent of its economy.
Gabon protected more of itself than almost any nation on earth and in 2023 pioneered Africa's first debt-for-nature swap with private creditors, borrowing $500 million against a promise to guard its oceans. Yet travel and tourism is 0.8 percent of GDP, and the last park-visitor figure it published, for 2015, counted 2,500 people for the whole year. The swap financed the guarding of the asset. It never financed the way in.
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