US partners with UWEC to reduce wildlife trafficking

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | U.S. Mission in Uganda has partnered with the Uganda Wildlife Conservation and Education Center (UWEC) to host Zoohackathon 2019 in Entebbe.

Zoohackathon is a computer coding event that brings together developers, designers, project managers, and subject matter experts to create applications, systems, and tools to help reduce demand for trafficked wildlife products and disrupt wildlife trafficking value chains.

This year’s Zoohackathon was the fourth year of the global event and the second year in a row that UWEC has hosted Zoohackathon in Entebbe.  This year, 15 other cities around the world organized Zoohackathon events.

Teams of coders competed against one another to develop a prototype solution that responds to one of the provided global and local wildlife trafficking problem statements.  Uganda is an important destination in the global, black market trade of illicit products, earning it a designation as a “focus country” in the U.S. Department of State’s 2018 Wildlife Trafficking Report.

U.S. Ambassador Deborah R. Malac said wildlife trafficking is an international conservation crisis.

“It is also a multi-billion dollar, black-market criminal enterprise that threatens global security, undermines the rule of law, fuels corruption, and hampers economic development.”