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While the world has built smart cities, hospitals and campuses, Kenya is advancing ‘smart biospheres’, that help conservancies monitor, manage and protect wildlife and ecosystems. This pioneering public–private collaboration establishes a cooperative digital infrastructure available to partners nationwide. The solution enables the real-time exchange of wildlife data between conservancies and the government to enhance conservation intelligence.

Growth of smart biospheres for conservation

Over the past six years, CCF, Actility by Netmore and Cisco have donated LoRaWAN infrastructure to support conservation connectivity. Beginning at Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in 2019 and expanding through the Northern Rangelands Trust, the donated network became Africa’s largest conservation-focused LoRaWAN network, connecting hundreds of field sensors. Now, 62 LoRaWAN gateways are onboarded, providing coverage for millions of hectares and supporting 23 cooperative partners, including the Maasai Mara.

LoRaWAN IoT tracking technologies offer a lower-cost alternative to satellite-based monitoring, meaning their use has accelerated, under limited conservation budgets.

From fragmentation to long-term resilience 

As the network grew organically, organisations relied on local on-premise servers. This created risks of single points of failure, increased security risks, and high maintenance costs, limiting national scalability. To address this, KWS and CCF migrated the network to a sovereign LoRaWAN cloud platform hosted at Konza Technopolis, supported with the Actility ThingPark™ Platform.

The LNS platform ensures all wildlife tracking data remains within Kenya’s borders and under KWS control (complying with the Kenya Data Protection Act 2019) while conservancies’ business data remains private to them. Robust security measures protect sensitive information, including the location of endangered species, such as rhinos.

Why data sovereignty matters for conservation 

As we rethink how natural assets are monitored and valued, countries are moving to build strong infrastructure and local capacity that integrates globally. Hosting LoRaWAN data within Kenya is a first step to strengthen national resilience, digital infrastructure and local opportunity. It helps bolster economic, research and innovation benefits of conservation technology locally, placing Kenya at the forefront of advancing digital infrastucture to support biodiversity protection and boost local economies.

Enabling connectivity and data roaming across landscapes 

Much like mobile data roaming in Europe, the new technical architecture allows wildlife and asset data to move across landscapes while remaining securely routed to its owner. The LNS creates an interoperable network that supports real-time tracking of wildlife, rangers, vehicles, livestock, weather, flooding and other operational data across conservancies, so tracking can continue as assets move between areas such as the Maasai Mara and Lewa.  

Co-operation for long-term sustainability 

The sovereign server is built on a cooperative model to build an inclusive digital infrastructure for all. With seed funding from CCF, the project aims to be fully sustainable within three years. Shared costs enable conservation charities to use the platform free of charge, while small-scale agricultural farmers and academic institutions can add network segments for a modest fee. By reducing technical cost barriers, this model ensures that under-resourced and well-resourced sites benefit from high-quality digital infrastructure.

Collaborating partners join a steering committee to oversee governance and ensure cost transparency for equitable, secure and well-managed systems.

Invitation to Join 

KWS and CCF invite Kenyan organisations working in conservation and sustainable land management to get in touch by emailing info@connectedconservation.foundation

By uniting sensors, landscapes and organisations under a single sovereign LNS, Kenya Wildlife Service and partners are pioneering a first step in Kenya’s Sovereign Conservation Intelligence Infrastructure, empowering local organisations in their data decision-making to safeguard biodiversity and ecosystems.