The African Primatological Society is a Panafrican Society (APS) that was created to promote primate research and conservation on the African continent, with a greater involvement and lead efforts of Africans to better understand and protect African primates and their habitats.

In April 2016, an important delegation of Africans attended for the first time an IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group African Primate Red List Assessment Workshop in Rome. Assessing the state of primates across the African continent brought a new sense of responsibility to these burgeoning crop of native Africans as the results of the evaluation revealed that more and more species are being driven to the edge of extinction. Indeed there was a 25% increase in the number of African primate species classified as threatened bringing the total percentage of threatened primates to 55% in mainland Africa, at least 87% in Madagascar and 62% worldwide so that today, primates are the most threatened group of mammals in the World. We are faced with these conservation challenges at a time when there is large scale and fast changes taking place across diverse sectors on the continent from infrastructure, human capital, politics, economics to demographics. A United Nations report projected that over half of the world’s population growth between 2017 –2050 is likely to occur in Africa. This presents us with increased responsibility (and not burdens) as primatologists, conservationsists and especially as Africans to be more coordinated, equipped and effective in our approach whether in formulating research questions or in executing conservation actions. This is why the APS has been created.