&gt; <i>But don&#x27;t you think the wildlife are equally important?</i><p>The implicit end of that sentence is &quot;equally important to the hundreds of millions of Africans living there.&quot; And to that, emphatically no.<p>People are more important. Full stop. I am no anti-environmental activist. I want to see renewable energy take over fossil fuels, I want to see conscientious business taking environmental factors into account at all steps of production. But given the 100% false dichotomy of &quot;African development&quot; or &quot;animals&quot; I am going to pick the one that helps one of the most impoverished, war-torn regions on the planet every time.