Covane Fishing & Safari Lodge is owned by the Canhane community, and was originally established with the support of Helvetas, a Swiss NGO, which has subsequently been  taken over by Lupa, a Mozambique-based NGO.

Covane Fishing & Safari Lodge is currently being transformed into a 3-star lodge through a process between the Canhane community and private investors. 

History of the Canhane Community and the name 'Covane'

Situated in the Canhane Village, the Lodge was originally called the Covane Community Lodge.  With the redevelopment plans, a decision was made to rename the Lodge to better explain to travellers what they would experience at the Lodge.  In deciding to keep the name 'Covane' the community explained the significance of Covane: 

Apparently Covane, who came from another village, was the first explorer to discover the Canhane area. He married the chief of Canhane Village’s daughter and later also took a second wife before returning to his village. His wives were jealous of each other however and argued often. After his wife’s brother passed away, Covane returned to Canhane village, so that they could pay their condolences, but one of his wives contaminated the gift of condolence (of nuts) by placing a dreadlock on it. The father of the dead son was so upset about this that he passed away. Following these events, Covane left, but the Canhane area was hit by terrible droughts. Consequently they called on Covane to come back in order to set right what happened by performing a traditional ceremony that consequently resulted in rain. The community therefore needed him to stay in order to rid them of the droughts. They gave him the land on which the lodge is currently built and he lived there until his last days. He was also buried near this site. The community thus decided to give the lodge the name 'Covane'  (Information from Open Africa)

 

Canhane Community win VSO Entrepeneurship Award

The Canhane Community have won the VSO Entrepreneurship Recognition Scheme Award - a recognition for outstanding entrepreneurial spirit. This award was made in Blantyre, Malawi on 26 October 2010, and comes with a cash prize that will be used to purchase PCs, printers and software, as well as training on the use of the equipment.