Strategy
The Rob Walton Foundation focuses most of its work on helping safeguard Africa’s Keystone Protected Areas: currently a portfolio of 162 large, ecologically important protected and conserved areas across 33 countries. These landscapes are central to biodiversity, water security, livelihoods, and the broader conservation systems around them. Our role is focused and practical: we support the people and institutions working to ensure these landscapes, all sovereign public and community assets, are well-managed for future generations.
We do this through partnership. RWF works alongside African governments, protected area authorities, community institutions, the African Union, conservation organizations, funders, and technical partners. We engage governments to understand priorities and support enabling conditions for durable conservation, but our grantmaking and activities are guided by RWF’s independent charitable objectives, governance, and compliance policies. We fund and support partners where there is alignment with our mission, strong accountability, respect for community rights, and a credible path to improved stewardship of Keystone Protected Areas.
Our strategy has three mutually reinforcing parts.
First, we help mobilize long-term, diversified funding so effective protected area management is not dependent on short-term grants alone.
Second, we support capacity: accountable NGOs, capable public institutions, African leadership and career pathways, workforce development, and peer learning.
Third, we support country and community engagement that strengthens legitimacy, rights, and practical benefits for people living in and around these landscapes.
Across all of this, we aim to keep a high bar for quality, reduce unnecessary reporting burden, learn from evidence, and support a broader partnership in which African institutions, communities, and conservation partners remain at the center.