Event Details
Abercrombie & Kent founder Geoffrey Kent will be joined by his childhood friend, the renowned paleoanthropologist, activist and conservationist, Dr Richard Leakey at the Royal Geographical Society on 27 September 2016 for a special one-off event. The two friends will share stories about their extraordinary lives and – with Dr Leakey as the current Chair of the Kenya Wildlife Service – discuss the challenges facing wildlife conservation in Africa today.
The pair will certainly make excellent raconteurs. Geoffrey Kent was born in 1942 while his parents were on safari in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). At the age of 16, Kent undertook an initial solitary exploration of the African continent by motorbike between Kenya and Cape Town. Back in Kenya after service in the British Army, Kent joined his parents in founding Abercrombie & Kent as a luxury safari operation. Today the business attracts more than 200,000 clients per annum.
In 1962 (aged 18) Richard Leakey started a safari guiding business with a friend. He subsequently took up fossil hunting and in 1984 discovered an almost complete skeleton, nicknamed ‘Turkana Boy’, over 1.6 million years old. It remains the most complete early human skeleton ever found. In 1993 the small plane Leakey was piloting developed engine failure and crashed, resulting in partial amputation of both legs. Leakey was asked by Kenya’s President to take up the position as Chair of the Board of the Kenya Wildlife Service in 2015.
Tickets for this evening are £ 25 plus booking fees. Proceeds will support Friends of Conservation (FOC), formerly ‘Friends of the Masai Mara’ – a wildlife conservation charity co-founded by Geoffrey Kent, nearly thirty-five years ago.
To buy tickets online: eventbrite.co.uk
