ENCOURAGING CONSERVATION THROUGH ENTERPRISE

delve beneath these numbers, however, and you get a slightly different picture. Poverty still persists in much of the country. Ethiopia’s per capita income averages $590 per person—“ substantially lower than the regional average,” reports the World Bank. (In comparison, the per capita income for Kenya was $1,340 last year.) Further, despite being the second most-populous country in Africa, Ethiopia remains the least urbanised.

That’s certainly the case around Simien Mountains National Park in northern Ethiopia. “There’s minimal infrastructure in this area,” observes Dave O’Connell, a Pennsylvania business owner who visited the Simiens last year with his wife. “It’s really different from the other natural areas we’ve been to in Africa. You don’t stop and get a soda. There is no gas