Our History

Beginning in 1999, representatives from founding ABCG member organizations created an informal partnership to discuss the value of focused collaboration as a way to achieve greater conservation impact than the members could acting individually. They agreed that a number of priority biodiversity issues were not being adequately addressed by any one institution or the development assistance community at large. In addition, the complexities of many of these issues required a range of expertise and experience that no one institution possessed.

From these discussions there emerged a clear need to go beyond what any conservation NGO was currently doing or could possibly do on its own. Growing out of this need, representatives from the member organizations formed the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group.

Thanks to USAID’s long-term support, ABCG has become an established thought leader in identifying and constructing strategies to address emerging and high-priority threats to biodiversity in Africa by generating new knowledge, fostering communities of practice, and sharing best practices with stakeholders that include local communities, conservation professionals, and policy and decision makers in the US and Africa.