The International Trade Centre (ITC), and the UN’s Comtrade database, report that Botswana exports shark fins worth over P17 million (US figure) to neighboring African countries. Botswana has no coastline, yet is still supplying nearby African nations and the world with unsustainable shark fins.
The Botswana government can not explain these figures, dating back to 2018 and some years prior.
Botswana worries that powerful criminal syndicates use the country as a conduit to smuggle the products of endangered shark species. The nation itself is a signatory of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
Botswana must report its trade statistics, as a UN member requirement. According to the UN’s data, South Africa and Zambia were the largest importers of Botswanian shark fins. Presumably, the fins are re-exported; however, it remains unclear where they originate.
Suspiciously, South Africa, also required to report its trade to the UN, has not recorded the imports of these shark fins. A Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report lists South Africa as the world’s seventh-largest exporter of shark fin from 2000 to 2011 (valued at roughly $8.8 million).
In 2015, Botswana ranked close to countries like Brazil in shark fin exports, baffling the countries department of wildlife and national parks. A company believed to be smuggling fins out of the nation revealed that products included dried mopane worms and tinned fish.
The Botswana government is still investigating this matter.