Implications of African infrastructure development for threatened species' habitats and persistence

Infrastructure development (ID) is an economic priority for Africa but threatens remaining natural areas, supporting some Sustainable Development Goals while undermining others. Despite increasing African ID investment, its scale and environmental implications remain poorly surveyed, particularly for biodiversity. In response, this study compiles spatial data on future African ID (roads, rails, development corridors, BRI projects, transmission lines, pipelines, mines, oil/gas) relative to new high-resolution mapping of African threatened vertebrate species habitats ( n = 1092). Habitats shared by progressively more threatened species do not appear less susceptible to incursions by future ID, suggesting that ID planning has not meaningfully avoided high-richness habitats. Future ID would intersect high-richness habitats relatively more frequently than has current infrastructure, and more often than expected given the prevalence of such habitats across Africa, particularly for habitats >86 th richness percentile (20% future vs. 13% current infrastructure) or >5 km from current infrastructure. Future ID would similarly incur into nominally inaccessible wilderness areas at greater rates than has current infrastructure (16–23% future vs. 10–16% current), again particularly where >5 km from current infrastructure. A conservative scenario presuming habitat loss <1 km from future ID and >5 km from current infrastructure describes small to moderate declines to species persistence of 0.05–2% of maximum potential persistence, concentrated amongst 29 small-range species in the Great Rift Valley. Persistence declines would worsen drastically, given greater habitat losses around future ID, underscoring the imperative of limiting future ID footprints. To this end, a proposal for a conservation trust, entailing ‘on demand’ local conservation areas financed by future developers, is outlined.