Dining out: West Africa’s bushmeat trade is greater threat than poaching
In his final report from Ghana, adventurer and environmentalist Ian Packham come face-to-face with the illegal trade in wild meats, its impact on the environment and public health.
Bui Dam hydroelectric plant, close to the border with Côte d’Ivoire in Ghana’s northwest, came online just a decade ago. The electricity it produces has stopped many of the power cuts which had blighted Ghana in preceding years, and it led to the creation of a now-busy fish market on the shores of the resulting reservoir, a short distance from the Bui Camp township.
My abiding memory will not be the great piles of fish on sale at the market however. It will be the image of a man appearing from the tree cover lining the market’s access road. He was carrying the limp body of a mongoose in one hand, before placing it on the back seat of his car and driving off at speed.
While this encounter happened by chance, if you know where to look, and who to talk to, it isn’t hard to find bushmeat, defined as the meat from a wild animal hunted specifically for human consumption, in any Ghanaian marketplace.
Ghana has made the bushmeat trade illegal because of its threat to wildlife. But a combination of nostalgia and status – it’s expensive in cities because of middle men and transport, just as spices were in the UK – means demand for wild caught animals is growing. In many parts of Africa, demand is reaching unsustainable levels, as the continent’s population increases and gets wealthier, and Ghana is no exception.
Studies suggest Ghana consumes more bushmeat than anywhere else in the world. Historically, those eating most bushmeat have been the rural poor, with around 3.5m Ghanaians still living on less than $1.90 US [£1.50] per day. Not only is catching their own meat economically more viable for these rural populations, but it’s also the freshest form of protein in areas far from fish stocks and without refrigeration.
More recently, it’s been the case that it’s those living in urban areas that are seeking out bushmeat as ‘a taste of home’. Antelope such as duiker, and a rodent called the grasscutter (or great cane rat), are the most common species eaten, with the latter sometimes farmed. But roasted cuts of bat, monkey, snake and warthog can also be found alongside more usual butchery like chicken and beef.
A report for the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation [FAO] called the bushmeat trade a bigger threat to wildlife inside protected areas than poaching of elephants for their ivory and rhino for their horns. It found West Africa to suffer worst from the trade compared to other regions of the continent.
The bushmeat trade is therefore putting wildlife populations in Ghana at risk for short term gain, with a different report finding more than 300 land mammals at risk because of illegal hunting. Meanwhile, the bushmeat trade is creating long-term pain by limiting the attractiveness to tourists of areas where illegal hunting is high. Nobody goes on safari to see a national park devoid of wildlife.
Farming of animals like the grasscutter is an obvious answer, and such farms do exist. Yet the most traditionally minded believe that farmed animals lack the ‘potency’ and taste of their wild cousins – something people in the UK say of animal products such as smoked salmon.
Farming is also a way of keeping human populations safe. The bushmeat trade is believed to have been responsible for several disease outbreaks in the immediate past, most fatally West Africa’s Ebola outbreak between 2014 and 2016. Most agree this was caused by the consumption of an infected fruit bat outside of the city of Makeni in Sierra Leone. It led to the deaths of at least 11,300 people and caused panic around the world.
Even more recently, an mpox outbreak in Ghana occurred in 2022-23, and is believed by some to have been responsible for the outbreak which then occurred in London. Originally known as monkeypox, it belongs to the same family of viruses as the much more virulent smallpox.
Another outbreak of a more serious strain of mpox was declared by the Africa Centres for Disease Control in East Africa just a few weeks ago in August 2024, which the World Health Organisation declared a global health emergency the following day. This was a day before the first case was discovered outside the continent (in Sweden), underlining the seriousness of the outbreak. Strains of the virus have been identified in those eating bushmeat, with the animal reservoir here not being bats but rodents and primates.
Ghana is particularly susceptible to disease outbreaks (although it wasn’t affected by the Ebola outbreak) because of its position as a West African transport hub. Bushmeat also makes its way to cities with large diaspora populations like London and Washington DC, and the fear must be that a disease more dangerous than mpox slips through the net and triggers a global pandemic.
Making the bushmeat trade illegal in Ghana seems to have had no noticeable impact, given the ease with which such meats can still be purchased across the country. It’s changing people’s attitudes and convincing populations to turn away from bushmeat, which is sure to have the biggest ultimate effect on the trade.
Educational programmes aimed at the next generation of Ghanaians is likely to have the most success, but only if the next generation can see the benefit of maintaining Ghana’s wildlife by experiencing its wonder for themselves. Very few Ghanaians have seen an elephant, hippo, or monkey in the wild.
More features and opinion:
Service Integration and Management can drive sustainability, here’s how
How people in Ghana are learning to profit in a win-win for wildlife too
Images: Ian Packham