Four years ago, I stood at the foothills of Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park and gave a mountain gorilla her name. She was born on 13 September 2021, to Igitangaza, of the Mutobo family. I called her Indatezuka — the resilient one. I want to be precise about what that means.

In much of Africa, naming a newborn is not decoration. It is the moment a family accepts responsibility for a life. You do not name what you do not intend to protect. And I like that name, because resilience is never the achievement of a single animal or a single institution. It is what collective responsibility looks like when it holds.

Every September, that understanding is given public form. Kwita Izina—"to give a name”—brings communities, conservationists and national leaders together to name newborn mountain gorillas. Since 2005, 438 gorillas have been named.

The evidence sits in the population itself. More than 600 mountain gorillas now live in the Virunga Massif and more than 1,000 across the wider transboundary range that includes Uganda’s Bwindi and DRC’s Virunga. The mountain gorilla is the only great ape whose numbers are still rising. That is not sentiment. It is the return on a decision these countries made about value.

The significance of Kwita Izina extends far beyond Rwanda. It is an African platform for demonstrating what becomes possible when a nation treats nature not as scenery, but as an asset; when communities are not spectators, but owners and decision-makers; and when conservation is connected to livelihoods, enterprise and national ambition.

That lesson matters because Africa’s natural capital — its forests, rivers, soils, wildlife and biodiversity — is the foundation of much of its economy. The World Bank estimates that nature-based sectors provide roughly two-thirds of employment in many African countries. Globally, nearly half of GDP is linked to biodiversity and ecosystem services. Yet these assets rarely receive the same policy attention as roads, energy systems or digital infrastructure

Kwita Izina challenges that separation. The recovery of mountain gorillas is not only a wildlife story. It is the result of African institutions, scientists, rangers, businesses and neighbouring communities organizing around a shared national asset. Rwanda made the gorilla economically visible, and then built the institutions to protect that value. The ceremony makes that relationship legible: a living gorilla has ecological value, cultural meaning and the capacity to support jobs, enterprise and investment.

Tourism remains an important part of this success. But tourism is a single revenue line, and the pandemic showed how quickly it can disappear. A conservation system that depends on international visitors is one shock away from trouble. The deeper opportunity lies in the wider biodiversity economy: agriculture, restoration, technology, research, financial services, renewable energy, logistics and the local enterprises that depend on healthy ecosystems. Success should therefore be measured not only in visitors and receipts, but in how much value remains in African economies and in the landscapes where it is created.

Making that durable requires money that does not depend on a single season. Rwanda is now exploring blended and biodiversity finance, including new windows under the Rwanda Green Fund, to put conservation on a footing that can survive a bad year for tourism. It also requires better data. Environmental DNA monitoring in the Volcanoes landscape is not a scientific curiosity; it is financial infrastructure. You cannot finance what you cannot measure, and Africa will not attract investment-grade capital into nature until it can count what it holds.

These figures do not mean every challenge has been solved. Land pressure remains intense. Communities living beside wildlife still bear real costs, from crop damage to limits on access and the disruption that can accompany park expansion. African agency cannot mean transferring the burden of conservation to rural families. It must mean rights, fair compensation, access to capital and markets, and a meaningful voice in decisions.

This is the broader African opportunity represented by Kwita Izina. From the Congo Basin to the savannas of East Africa and the continent’s coastal ecosystems, conservation will last only when people living closest to natural assets can see a viable future in protecting them. The most durable solutions will not be imported models applied to African landscapes. They will be African institutions and communities combining local knowledge with science, finance and technology. Nor is Rwanda itself a template to be copied. Its political commitment, compact geography and strong institutions are not universal. What travels is the logic, not the model.

Governments must therefore bring natural capital into economic and industrial policy. Financial institutions need products for nature-positive enterprises. Universities must prepare young Africans for careers as ecologists, engineers, drone operators, data specialists, entrepreneurs and financial analysts. Procurement and supply chains must enable domestic firms to capture more of the value that nature generates.

Kwita Izina should be embraced as Africa’s invitation to tell a different conservation story: not one of outsiders saving African wildlife, but of Africans investing in their own inheritance. Rwanda’s achievement shows that protecting nature and building prosperity are not competing ambitions. When communities have ownership, skills and opportunity, they become the strongest custodians of natural capital.

The task now is to carry that principle across the continent. Africa must not merely conserve its natural wealth for others to admire. It must own it, invest in it and use it to build resilient economies on African terms.

When I gave Indatezuka her name, I did not adopt an animal. I accepted an obligation — and so did everyone else standing on that hillside. The question before us is not what we will call the next generation of Africa’s wildlife. It is what kind of continent we intend to hand over.

The writer is the Chief Executive Officer, African Wildlife Foundation