A dataset of pre-pandemic African protected area visitation
Falko Buschke, Claudia Capitani, Philipp Schägner, Christophe Nsengiyumva, Hellen Okelo, Oumar Cissé, Susan Snyman

TL;DR
This paper introduces a comprehensive dataset of African protected area visitation from pre-pandemic times, aiming to support conservation and economic analyses.
Contribution
The paper provides a new, spatially explicit dataset of African protected area visitation spanning multiple years and countries.
Findings
The dataset includes 4,216 records from 341 protected areas across 34 African countries.
Most visitation data (78%) was collected between 2000 and 2020, with a median of six years of data per protected area.
The dataset is compatible with the World Database of Protected Areas for comparative analyses.
Abstract
When people visit protected areas, their presence can amplify public support for conservation and their spending closes conservation finance gaps and feeds local economies. Across Africa, protected areas are often presented as engines for poverty alleviation and rural development. Yet visitation data remains scarce for most of the continent. Here we present a dataset of African protected area visitation obtained from government sources as well as peer-reviewed and grey literature. The spatially explicit dataset includes 4,216 records from 341 protected areas in 34 countries. The earliest visitor counts date back to 1965, but the majority (78%) stem from between the years 2000 and 2020. While 22% of protected areas only have visitation data for a single year, the median protected area has six years of visitation data, facilitating temporal analyses. Moreover, the dataset is compatible…
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Taxonomy
TopicsConservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management · Diverse Aspects of Tourism Research · Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
