Recently Training Needs Assessment (TNA) for wildlife con- servation organizations was conducted for the Albertine Rift Valley countries. This program enabled, among other things, training people from the Great Lakes countries of Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Zam- bia. The College recognizes that conservation is changing with newly emerging issues. Course programmes respond to these emerging issues to equip future managers with tools to tackle new problems affecting conservation in Africa. Recently TNA enabled the introduction of new curricula to include courses in forest conservation and primate conservation to meet the de- mands of other countries and conservation initiatives.
PAST PERFORMANCE AND FUTURE PLANS
The College has won several awards including the UNEP-Sasaka- wa Environmental Prize. The College is recognized as a Centre of Excellence in professional and technical wildlife management training in Africa by the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
In its 47 years of existence CAWM, Mweka has trained over 4511 students and professionals from Countries in Africa and beyond. Students have come from 57 Countries worldwide. Re- sponding to the increased demand for wildlife management professionals in many countries the College has increased its programs since its establishment and currently is planning to establish Bachelor degrees in Wildlife Management and Wild- life Tourism. Recently the College admitted Mozambique and Sudanese students to meet the demand of these countries in wildlife professions following decades of civil wars.
The College has introduced short courses such as Wildlife in- telligence to facilitate conservation law-enforcement officers in curbing the recent boom in poaching and bushmeat prob- lems in these countries where rampant poverty and uncon- trolled weapons as a result of past civil wars. The College re- cently offered a post-graduate diploma programme specifically dedicated to the bushmeat problem in 2008/2009 academic year. This programme sponsored by the USFWS through the African Biodiversity Collaborative Group trained people from Kenya, Uganda, Sudan and Tanzania on bushmeat problems identification, investigation and combating techniques.
Most wildlife crimes fail to be prosecuted because of lack of evi- dence to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt. The College
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is planning to establish a wildlife forensic laboratory, which will enable training of wildlife managers and rangers in simple DNA technologies. The College has successfully offered a week long course on bushmenat identification using forensics in 2009. When equipped with a forensic laboratory, the College will be able to offer training in this technology which will be important to law-enforcement agencies in combating poaching in African countries.
CHALLENGES
Significant challenge is reduction in student scholarships to students due to economic slow downs worldwide. This is mak- ing it increasingly difficult for local and foreign students to ac- cess training at this College. Another challenge is equipments. Despite being endowed with state of the art equipments in some areas the College is deficient in others such as molecular technology, night vision goggles, and in particular poor com- puter and internet access limit student learning. Finally, lack of infrastructures for training hampers the College ability to provide service for more people.
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