MAJETE WATCH
Wildlife Detection & Survey System
A real-time AI-powered monitoring platform protecting one of Africa's greatest conservation success stories.
Majete Wildlife Reserve is one of Africa's most remarkable conservation success stories. Located in the Lower Shire Valley of south-western Malawi, the 700 km² reserve was first proclaimed a protected area in 1955. By the late 1990s, decades of poaching and neglect had left it nearly devoid of wildlife — elephants, lions, rhinos, and most large mammals had been eradicated entirely.
In 2003, African Parks entered into a public-private partnership with Malawi's Department of National Parks and Wildlife to rehabilitate and manage the reserve. What followed is a story of extraordinary restoration. More than 3,000 animals from 17 species have since been reintroduced, including black rhino (2003), elephant (2006), lion (2012), giraffe (2018), cheetah (2019), and African wild dog (2021). Majete is now Malawi's only Big Five reserve and the country's premier wildlife destination.
So successful has the recovery been that since 2016, Majete has been able to supply over 1,100 animals to help restore other parks across Malawi — including 150 elephants as part of the historic 500 Elephants translocation in 2017. The reserve's 2024 aerial census recorded more than 12,400 large herbivores alongside primates, predators, vultures, and ground hornbills.
Today, Majete is a living example of how sound management, community partnership, and sustained investment can transform a landscape. Zebra, buffalo, kudu, sable antelope, impala, and warthog roam the miombo woodlands and granite hills. Elephants bathe in the Shire River while hippos wallow nearby. Lions, leopards, and cheetahs have reclaimed their role as apex predators. And over 400 bird species — including Livingstone's flycatcher, Boehm's bee-eater, and four species of vulture — fill the air.
MajeteWatch is a real-time wildlife detection and survey system built specifically for Majete Wildlife Reserve. It combines a network of AI-enabled camera traps deployed across the reserve with automated image analysis, bird audio detection, and a live public dashboard — giving researchers, conservationists, and wildlife enthusiasts an unprecedented window into daily life at Majete.
The system runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, automatically detecting and logging every animal movement, bird call, and human or vehicle presence captured by the cameras. Every detection is saved with a timestamped snapshot image, the camera location, and the detected species — building a continuously growing scientific record of wildlife activity across the reserve.
MajeteWatch is a PixCams, Inc. initiative developed in partnership with the Majete Wildlife Reserve to advance conservation technology in Africa.
MajeteWatch integrates several cutting-edge technologies into a single unified platform running on dedicated hardware at the reserve.
Traditional wildlife surveys are expensive, time-consuming, and can only capture a snapshot of animal activity at the time a ranger or researcher is present. Automated camera trap monitoring changes this fundamentally — it provides continuous, objective, timestamped data across multiple locations simultaneously, without disturbing the animals.
For a reserve like Majete, where the recovery of predator and prey populations must be carefully monitored, this data is invaluable. Activity patterns reveal when and where animals are most active, which areas are being used by which species, whether nocturnal species are present, and whether human intrusion events require attention. Over time, trends in detection frequency provide early warning of population changes.
The bird audio detection adds another dimension — Majete's extraordinary diversity of over 400 bird species is an indicator of ecosystem health. Tracking which species are present, in what numbers, and at what times of year provides valuable data for biodiversity monitoring and research.
MajeteWatch makes all of this data publicly accessible in real time — connecting people around the world to the daily rhythms of one of Africa's most important conservation areas, and demonstrating what is possible when technology is put in service of wildlife protection.
PixCams, Inc. is a technology company specialising in AI-powered camera systems and wildlife monitoring solutions. MajeteWatch was designed, built, and is maintained by PixCams as part of our commitment to applying advanced technology to conservation challenges in Africa and beyond.