MALAWI NAMED LEADING TRANSIT HUB TO ASIA

Malawi is one of the leading transit hubs in Africa for outwards shipping to Asia, a report by the wildlife trade monitoring network, Traffic, has said.

The report has been prepared ahead of the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) scheduled to take place in Africa this September.   It names Malawi and Togo as leading transit hubs for ivory from the over 30,000 elephants killed every year in Africa.

The report says that Asian criminal networks that often collaborate with the political and economic elite completely dominate the supply of ivory out of Africa.

“The syndicates have become the main challenge in the fight against wildlife trade as they are involved in moving large illegal consignments of ivory across Africa and then to Asia,” reads the report.  It then says the tendency is on the rise as the region’s law enforcement agencies focus much on the low and local level and not the transnational organised crime networks which it says are aided by ‘corrupt  officials’….

Read the rest of the article here and the CITES report here