A bizarre story has recently come out of Zimbabwe. Grace Mugabe, the politically powerful wife of the ageing president Robert Mugabe, has come up with a plan to settle a debt to China with 35 young elephants, eight lions, 12 hyenas and a giraffe. The debt was incurred in 1998 when Zimbabwe sent troops and bought equipment from China to help President Laurent Kabila in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Kabila needed help fighting off a rebel movement backed by Uganda and Rwanda.
Zimbabwe’s use of live wildlife as a commodity is nothing new. And it’s not the only country to do so. It is quite common for southern African states to sell what they consider to be surplus animals to zoos or safari parks outside Africa.
In January 2016, the US Fish and Wildlife Service gave the go ahead for Swaziland to export 18 elephants to zoos in the US. Between 2010 and 2014 an estimated 500 white rhinos and 20 elephants were exported from African range states.