Rhino conservation needed to be supported through regional initiatives for reasons related both to the general benefits of regional co-operation, and to the specific requirements of rhino populations. The management of rhino populations requires significant technical expertise and know-how, institutional capacity, finance, special equipment and moreover a conducive conservation policies. Without these critical factors, efforts to conserve remnant rhino populations are often frustrated. However, where firm conservation measures can be implemented, they invariably boost the general conservation of biodiversity within the areas where rhino projects are conducted. In turn, protected areas that contain rhinos tend to have a major direct and regional economic potential. The SADC region as a whole did not lack the expertise necessary for undertaking the required rhino conservation activities, but this expertise was concentrated in a few countries. At the start of the Programme, there was a strong need to identify institutional and technical weaknesses and to build and strengthen capacities in the region to provide a reliable institutional and technical infrastructure that could sustain and benefit rhino conservation in the long-term. The rationale for a regional approach to rhino conservation also rose from the needs of metapopulation management. With rhinos, the need to achieve this metapopulation management was complicated by inadequate information on the status and location of fragmented rhino groups in several SADC states. To obtain the required information, from field surveys, was a specialised and often costly task; but funding was not readily available for such work owing to the massive funding required for conservation in various other areas where larger numbers of rhinos were already under management.

Once rhinos are proven to be present in a particular area (which is likely to be remote and difficult to operate in), a problem then arises in that any management activity such as capture and translocations require scarce expertise, special equipment and funding. Unless the capacity exists to undertake such management, there is little point in investing resources in finding surviving rhinos in the first place; in fact, surveys may do more harm than good if they merely serve to expose rhinos which were previously undetected by poachers. Whether remnant rhino groups are left in situ, or are moved to refuges elsewhere, they will require protection and monitoring which will in turn require training and capacity building through regional co-operation. Based on this rationale, the Programme planned to provide and share expertise, specialised logistical and technical support, training, information and catalytic funding for selected regional rhino conservation targets, through a co-ordinated regional mechanism, in close co-operation with relevant regional and national bodies. By establishing regional co-ordination in the management of the endangered and charismatic rhinos, it was intended that a precedent would be created within SADC, so that this co-ordination could be extended to other wildlife species that should be managed at a regional rather than at a national level. The Southern African Development Community is the regional intergovernmental body which comprises Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and  Zimbabwe. The SADC Regional Programme for Rhino Conservation involves SADC member countries within the range of the target rhino subspecies.