The last kings of Africa

Every week, Inside Africa takes its viewers on a journey across Africa, exploring the true diversity and depth of different cultures, countries and regions.

(BraveheartNaija) For the past five years, Austria-based art historian and photographer Alfred Weidinger has traveled across Africa in search of royalty. His photography project, The Last Kings of Africa, is his attempt to capture the beauty and mystique of the region's most powerful sovereigns. So far he has photographed 220 tribal kings and leaders, with many more to go. 

 "I have a sort of deadline for myself -- which is the end of next year. It's not a question of the amount of kings or tribal leaders, it's just a question of countries," says Weidinger, who plans to visit Africa twice this year and six times in 2015.

"There are still countries I definitely want to visit, for example Swaziland and the southern part of Sudan."

Weidinger's photographic endeavors in Africa started in 1979 but the cumbersome equipment typical to that era quickly deterred the photographer. Fast forward 30 years, and a chance commission for a photographic exhibition sparked a long-term project where the lavish culture of Africa's dynasties became the focus.

Is this one of Central Africa's last lions?

BraveheatNaija; Lions have been absent from Gabon, a nation on the west coast of Cen

tral Africa, for decades. The last time anyone spotted one of these majestic predators was in 1996, when a French expat happened upon a female lion and her cubs.

 None have been seen since.

In 2001, Dr. Phil Hensche, a lion program Survey coordinator for Panthera, a global wild cat conservation organization, surveyed the lions in the region. What he found was not encouraging.

"We found that not only had lions disappeared, but there had been so much poaching that there was almost nothing left in the area," he recalls. Lions, once plentiful in the region, were declared "locally extinct." He also points out that the lion population in Africa has decreased by 50% in as little as three lion generations, or 20 years.