Combatting the Facilitators of Illegal Wildlife Trade in Cameroon
Identifying and strengthening capacity amongst public and private sector stakeholders to understand, investigate and prevent wildlife crime and associated illicit financial flows in Cameroon.
Poaching and trafficking are major drivers of biodiversity loss in Central Africa, and Cameroon remains a significant source, transit and export country for endangered wildlife and wildlife products. The illegal wildlife trade (IWT) in Cameroon is facilitated by legal and institutional vulnerabilities in the wildlife supply chain, such as the irregular issuance of CITES permits and lax port export controls, that are exploited by criminal actors.
To avoid detection and maximise profits, organised crime actors employ mechanisms such as bulk cash smuggling, hawala systems or simple bank transfers to move vast amounts of money across borders undetected. However, given that these financial flows are seldom investigated in Cameroon, little is understood about illicit financial flows linked to IWT, causing the authorities to disproportionately target low-level criminal actors in enforcement and judicial processes instead of the high-value criminal actors predominantly facilitating and benefitting from IWT.
In 2023, RUSI partnered with TRAFFIC, a non-governmental organisation working to ensure that wild species trade is legal and sustainable, to work on this project.
Sponsors and Partners
This project is funded by the United States Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL).
The project is in partnership with TRAFFIC.
Project team
Anne-Marie Weeden
Senior Research Fellow | SHOC Network Member - Researcher
Organised Crime and Policing
Elijah Glantz
Research Analyst and Project Officer
Organised Crime and Policing
Jennifer Scotland
Research Analyst
Organised Crime and Policing
Cathy Haenlein
Director of Organised Crime and Policing Studies
Organised Crime and Policing
Mark Williams
Programme Manager | SHOC Network Member - Researcher
Organised Crime and Policing
Aims and objectives
RUSI will analyse key IWT trends in Cameroon, with particular attention paid to cross-border flows with neighbouring Nigeria, as well as strengths and weaknesses of government and civil society approaches to combatting IWT-related financial crime.
This research will inform a series of capacity building events designed to upskill relevant agencies and their personnel to enable them to detect illicit wildlife products and conduct investigations – including parallel financial investigations – into wildlife crime. The project will likewise engage with magistrates and prosecutors to broaden awareness of the financial dimensions of wildlife crime, as well as work with the transport sector and port authorities to address supply chain vulnerabilities.
The two-year project has the following key objectives:
- Strengthen investigative and enforcement functions across relevant agencies in Cameroon to effectively target the illegal transit of wildlife within Cameroon and across the Nigerian border, through improved capacity to conduct parallel financial investigations.
 - Boost capacity amongst prosecutors, magistrates, and judges in Cameroon to effectively prosecute criminals engaged in, or associated with, wildlife trafficking, including through the use of financial evidence.
 - Enhance cooperation and interdiction efforts on the Nigerian land border.
 - Enhance knowledge and understanding of corruption risks, power and both formal and informal structures across the counter-wildlife trafficking architecture in Cameroon.
The project ultimately seeks to improve Cameroon’s resilience to IWT and disrupt its role as an important source, transit and export country in the IWT supply chain to reduce the threat organised crime poses to biodiversity in Central Africa.