South Africa, Namibia, Botswana

Restoring Historically Significant Ecosystems Through Eco-Tourism with the San People in Southern Africa

Organisation

!Khwa ttu San Culture and Education Centre NPC

Website

Support area

Conservation of biodiversity

Funding

174187.66 €

Project duration

Apr, 2025 – Mar, 2027

The ecologically highly valuable fynbos forests in the Western Cape are severely threatened in their existence by climate change and agriculture as well as invasive species introduced by it. Throughout human history, these ecosystems have repeatedly formed vital retreats in earlier times of climate change. As part of the West Coast Biodiversity Corridor, the project proposal aims to protect and restore their traditional ecological habitat together with the traditional San people. The San are to impart their way of life, their knowledge, their culture and tradition as well as their diet to visitors/tourists and to be trained (e.g. restaurant, tour guides) in order to be able to generate income for their communities in an already on-site visitor center with overnight accommodation and to generate income for Project, namely the restoration and protection of their traditional ecosytem and homeland.

Capacity development

In addition to providing of funding, IKI Small Grants supports !Khwa ttu in their organisational capacity through:

On-the-job mentorship and practical training from peer and specialist mentors to capacitate key staff to grow into more senior roles with expanded responsibilities.
Reviewing the organization’s current set of policies, assessing the scope of work to consolidate overlapping policies and fill gaps (e.g. gender policy), and updating policies against requirements
Knowledge management to grow internal capacity to capture, update and maintain all different kind of organizational information

About the organisation

!Khwa ttu is a San culture and education centre based on an 850 hectare nature reserve 70 kilometres north of Cape Town, South Africa. A non-profit company, directed jointly by the San and the Swiss-based Ubuntu Foundation, !Khwa ttu has been providing jobs, and practical residential training for young San from all over southern Africa, since 1999. Situated in the Cape Floral Kingdom, itself a UNESCO World Heritage site, !Khwa ttu embraces a range of environmental stewardship programmes as well as tourism activities.