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Documents filed in a Francistown court showed that Botswana allocated huge amounts of land for the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA) to provide space for wild animals to roam freely, but the country has instead become a huge child smuggling corridor.
Francistown Chief Magistrate Tshepo Magetse last week expressed alarm at a surge in child trafficking in the Kaza region and described Botswana as “a significant and dreaded transit route”.
KAZA is located in the Kavango and Zambezi River basins, where Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe meet. It is the world’s largest transboundary protected area, covering an area of about 520,000 square kilometers. It covers 36 declared protected areas such as national parks, game reserves, forest reserves, community conservation areas and game/wildlife management areas. Of these, 17% are in Angola, 30% in Botswana, 14% in Namibia, 25% in Zambia and 14% in Zimbabwe, making Botswana the country with the largest contribution to KAZA’s protected area land.
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