Ivory and rhino horn is being smuggled through Angola by traffickers disguised as tourists

By Pedro Tchindele for Radio Ecclesia

The Quatro de Fevereiro International Airport, Angola’s capital city Luanda, has recently been the gateway for many disguised tourists, with the clear intention of illicit trafficking of ivory and rhino horn. In the last three months alone, the Criminal Investigation Service (SIC), coordinating with other forces in the airport’s security system, detained two Vietnamese citizens in possession of 26 kilograms of ivory worked into jewellery; four kilograms of raw ivory; rhino horns, weighing 6.6 kilograms; and five rolls of elephant tail yarn, weighing eight grams. Speaking to Radio Benguela’s Pedro Tchindele, SIC spokesperson, Manuel Alaiua, revealed that the accused had been recruited to transport the said product, as he had been in the country for only five days, and intended to return to where he had come from same route of entry – Vietnam / Dubai / Luanda – with the product in his possession. The other perpatrator, also of Vietnamese nationality, was in Angola with the same purpose.

Listen to Pedro’s full report, in Portuguese, here:

This article is reproduced here as part of the African Conservation Journalism Programme, funded in Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe by USAID’s VukaNow: Activity. Implemented by the international conservation organization Space for Giants, it aims to expand the reach of conservation and environmental journalism in Africa, and bring more African voices into the international conservation debate. Written articles from the Mozambican and Angolan cohorts are translated from Portuguese. Broadcast stories remain in the original language.