i googled a bit and this is what i found.
AFRICA’S WILDLIFE ‘TO BE PRIVATISED’
By Martin Plaut, BBC, London
While people’s movements and particularly Indigenous Peoples across the world have been fighting the corporate take over of public lands and natural heritage, the privatization of Africa's national parks and their exploitation for tourism purposes has found the approval of, among others, the US State Department, the World Bank and even the former South African president Nelson Mandela
A South African private company has said that it has plans to take over a string of national parks throughout Africa. Sub-Saharan countries said to benefit from the plan are Zambia, Malawi, Uganda, Kenya and Mozambique. The scheme, which is the brainchild of a Dutch multi-millionaire and nature conservationist, Paul van Vlissingen.
The Dutch tycoon, whose family runs the Makro chain of wholesalers, came up with an initiative designed to save Africa's ailing game reserves.
The scheme was to found a private company, African Parks Management and Finance Company, to take them over.
African Parks is currently negotiating to take over other nature reserves in Mozambique, Uganda and Kenya. Mr van Vlissingen accepts that his plans are not only radical, but stir up controversy.
But he promises that although his company will be run along commercial lines, profits will be ploughed back into the countries in which they operate.
He believes that unless a radical approach to game conservancy is adopted, Africa's wildlife will be wiped out in less than a generation.
CONCESSIONS ENSURE A PROFITABLE HERITAGE
By Sven Lünsche
In 1999, under extreme financial pressure, the organisation adopted an innocuous- sounding policy called "commercialisation as a conservation strategy". SANParks, and with it conservation in SA, has not looked back.
What began with the outsourcing of its notoriously bad restaurant services in the Kruger National Park (KNP) in 1999 has grown at breakneck speed. Over the next few years income from its concessioned lodges, restaurants and stores could more than double SANParks' bottom-line profits, says outgoing CEO Mavuso Msimang.
Underlying this policy is a re-evaluation of what SANParks considers its core function - the management of biodiversity in protected areas and providing only the foundation for tourism and recreation. The rest, the commercial and tourist operations, are left to those who do it best - the private sector.
