The remote Gashaka region is still largely unexplored, although this area in north-eastern Nigeria is a premier wilderness where monkeys and apes still survive in large numbers. They are part of a rich assemblage of, often endemic, wildlife that has developed at this interface between the dry sub-Saharan Guinea savannah and the moist Cameroonian highlands. Primates include a large population of the rarest chimpanzee subspecies as well as colobus, guenons and baboons, which thrive here despite an unusually wet climate. The main ethnic groups – Fulani cattle herders and Hausa speaking subsistence farmers – still follow age-old traditions. Conservation challenges come in the form of human settlements in national parks, deforestation, annual bush fires, livestock grazing and hunting for bush-meat. This chapter reviews the inception and history of the Gashaka Primate Project, founded in the year 2000 and dedicated to research and conservation in this iconic primate habitat. The project’s international network of researchers and conservationists engage in areas such as primate socioecology; genetics and phylogeography; nutritional ecology; vocal communication and cognition; ethno-botany and ethno-primatology; human subsistence strategies and conflicts with wildlife; as well as habitat surveys assessing success and failure of conservation approaches. The contributions assembled in the volume Primates of Gashaka aim for interdisciplinarity and comparative dimensions, across species and the African continent.