Page 76 - The Book For Men Spring/Summer 2024

INZA KONÉ’S FASCINATION WITH PRIMATES BEGAN EARLY IN LIFE. Society, and the co-vice chair of the African Primate Specialist Group of the
“I was a nature lover, and I loved animals,” says Koné, recalling how, when he was just eight years old, his father gave him a new pet: a baby baboon. “The baboon was growing, and he became quite aggressive, and it became difficult to handle him by myself,” says the primatologist. “Finally, people made the decision to kill him, which was a shock to me at the time. My father said he should have prepared me for it to end this way. But, since then, I have looked at animals differently.”
After learning this valuable lesson about consequences, and what can happen when humans come into conflict with the natural world, Koné’s curiosity about the primates of his native West African homeland turned into a calling. Some years later, when he had the opportunity to attend a
lecture by French primatologist Ronald Noë, that calling became even clearer. “I was fascinated by what I learned that day,” says Koné. “I decided I wanted to learn more about animals and animal behaviour, so that I could be better equipped to protect them.”
Koné has spent much of the last three decades doing just that, becoming Côte d’Ivoire’s first primatologist, co-founder of the African Primatological
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Being Ivorian gives Koné an innate understanding of the nation and its people, he says, and also makes his fellow countryfolk more receptive to his message of conservation.
“Sciences like primatology are considered the business of people who are far from African realities,” Koné explains, “so becoming the very first Ivorian primatologist increased my sense of responsibility to change these paradigms and these perceptions. I believed that, as a local person, my voice would be heard more easily, compared to those of Europeans or Americans.”
In 2023, Koné received a Rolex Award for Enterprise in recognition for his work conserving the Tanoé-Ehy Forest in southeastern Côte d’Ivoire, where only two per cent of the country’s primary forests remain intact. The region is home to endangered primate species such as the Roloway monkey, the white-thighed colobus, and Miss Waldron’s red colobus (which was previously believed to be extinct), but is also where dozens of endemic and endangered species of plants, fish, amphibians, and birds live. In 2021, after more than a decade of environmental efforts by Koné and a group of people from the forest’s 11 villages, the primatologist succeeded in getting the Tanoé-Ehy Forest
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