College of African Wildlife Management

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For the Congolese town and district, see Mweka, Democratic Republic of the Congo

The College of African Wildlife Management (CAWM) commonly known as Mweka College or just Mweka, is located in a village of that name on the southern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, above the city of Moshi, about 14 kilometres north of its centre.

The locality also gives its name to the Mweka Trail, one of the routes on Kilimanjaro, used for the descent.

Following the independence of Tanganyika in 1961, the College of African Wildlife Management was established in 1963 by Bruce Kinloch as a pioneer institution for the training of African wildlife managers. Initial funding for Mweka was provided by the African Wildlife Leadership Foundation (now known as the African Wildlife Foundation), the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Frankfurt Zoological Society, with facilities donated by the government of Tanganyika. Since this time, the College has been a leader in providing quality wildlife management training in Africa, and has trained over 3,000 wildlife managers from 28 African countries and 18 non-African countries.

The majority of the College's students come from the SADC region, although the College opens its doors to all students with an interest in African wildlife management. A good number of students also come from countries such as Western and Eastern Europe, United States, India, Sri Lanka, Japan and many other countries.

The College has led the field of wildlife management training in Africa for 42 years, receiving a number of awards and accolades including the prestigious UNEP Sasakawa Environment Prize and being declared a centre of excellence as a Wildlife Training Institute by the East African Community.^{[citation needed]}

The college was founded with stringent academic discipline, its qualifications being justly renowned both within Tanzania and internationally. Good staff and facilities, both academic and sporting, guaranteed a high standard of education and therefore of graduate too.^{[citation needed]}

The college serves two main purposes:

1) To prepare local students for work within the national parks and reserves of Tanzania.

2) To prepare students for work within the safari industries (photographic & hunting) within Tanzania.

Though never suffering from any shortage of funding or of equipment, which has been eagerly donated over the years by organizations such as USAID and NORAD, various private sponsors, and the European Union, and perhaps being located at one of the best possible places in the world for a college of wildlife management, with national parks such as Kilimanjaro and Serengeti, and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area within easy reach, the college has seen a continuing decline in academic standars since Kinloch's departure in 1983. It is by no means unusual for field trips, sometimes constituting central parts of research courses, to be cancelled due to lack of funds, most likely a result of advanced corruption at the heart of the administration, and it is no longer any secret that most of the lecturers at the college are embarassingly ignorant of the most basic biology, and seemingly unaware of the various perspectives on current wildlife issues, and that several are known to accept payment in various forms from students in exchange for marks. In recent years, it seems the college's administration has been infested with a culture of corruption, which students are expected to share. Some donors, including NORAD and USAID, have withdrawn all sponsorship as large sums of money have mysteriously disappeared without any proper explanation for where it went. It seems that the only thing that can save Mweka College today, is a completely new management or administration, that will be willing to adhere to international standards, and employ experienced and knowledgeable lecturers who would take the field of wildlife management in Tanzania - where wildlife is more abundant and varied than in most countries - with the seriousness it deserves.