Why are so few African safaris Black-owned?

Vimbai Masiyiwa was on a family safari in Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls National Park when a guide made an offhand remark that stuck with her. “Don’t worry, it’s a lot more beautiful when we get to the lodge,” the guide said. The comment—meant to gloss over the poverty outside—left Masiyiwa unsettled. Why was the reality of local communities something to be ignored?

Masiyiwa, now 30, decided to change the narrative and opened her own safari company, Batoka Africa. As the first female safari lodge owner, Masiyiwa loves her home country of Zimbabwe and ensures her company focuses on the human element. 

“Once you look after people, and people see that they’re important, they see the value of the wildlife around them and protecting that wildlife,” she says about their first luxury lodge, Zambezi Sands River Lodge, which opened in June 2023. 

But Masiyiwa remains an outlier. Despite the safari industry generating over $12 billion annually, only 15 percent of the Africa Travel and Tourism Association’s safari businesses are Black owned.

However, a small but growing group of African entrepreneurs is working to change that—redefining who benefits from Africa’s wildlife and reshaping the future of safaris.

Who benefits from Africa’s safari industry?

For more than a century, safaris have been shaped by outsiders. “The underrepresentation of Black ownership in the safari industry is rooted in historical, economic, and systemic challenges,” says Naledi Khabo, CEO of the Africa Tourism Association. “Historical land dispossession has resulted in limited land ownership opportunities.”

The safari industry began in the late 19th century, during the colonial era, when European explorers and American adventurers traveled to the interiors of East and Southern Africa for cartography and game hunting. To this day, many safari lodges and camps are primarily owned by white male individuals, mainly serving white, affluent international travelers. 

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Khabo explains that establishing and running safari lodges demands substantial capital for land acquisition and infrastructure, and access to funding remains extremely scarce. The movement for more Black-owned safaris extends beyond representation, she adds. 

“African-owned camps will result in stronger cultural representation and integration in the guest experience, making for more meaningful experiences,” says Khabo. “By engaging with the community, conservation efforts will be deepened because the local community will have a vested interest.” 

An enhanced safari model

While most safari-goers only see Africa’s glamorous side, the unglamorous parts inspired Zimbabwean entrepreneur and former guide Beks Ndlovu to open African Bush Camps (ABC). This award-winning safari company is known for its high-end lodges and camps near protected areas that focus on conservation and empowering local communities through its foundation. 

“The abject poverty on the outskirts of these beautiful national parks, the horrible onslaught of wildlife year after year in certain areas that disappear, and the shirking of habitats really got to me,” he shares. 

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In 2006, Ndlovu opened his first camp—Somalisa Camp—in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park with just 16 staff members, hoping to create ambassadors in the industry and inspire others. Today, ABC operates 17 luxury bush camps across Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Zambia, employing 700 residents.

But breaking into the industry wasn’t easy. Zimbabwe’s economic collapse and political instability scared off early clients. Another challenge he endured, and some continue to face, is building trust. At the beginning, potential clients did a double take and wondered how secure it was to do business with an African-owned property, says Ndlovu. But what helped was that he had come from the very fabric of the industry as a reputable guide. 

Masiyiwa echoes this experience, noting that she heard from one agent recently that a guest didn’t choose their lodge because they weren’t secure about the level of service they would receive. “Changing that takes generations—it’s about shifting mindsets and dismantling institutional racism,” she says.

Praveen Moman, founder of Volcanoes Safaris, faced a different set of challenges in 1997 when he opened his first lodge, Mount Gahinga Lodge​, near Mgahinga Gorilla National Park in southwestern Uganda, bordering Rwanda​ and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). His venture came just three years after the Rwandan genocide during a period marked by upheaval and instability as rebels and refugees moved across the region. 

When Moman searched for a lodge site in Rwanda a few years later, he saw refugees returning from the DRC with nothing to eat. Having experienced displacement himself—his family fled Uganda during the 1970s Asian Expulsion—he returned decades later to establish Volcanoes Safaris, just as Rwanda’s national parks were reopening and tourism was reviving.

But finding skilled staff was nearly impossible since they “either left the country or died, or there’d be nobody to teach them,” Moman says.

Though this was a difficult start, it led to a philosophy of not relying on outsiders. “We had to build up our own people’s skills and abilities. We just set about empowering, training, and making our staff believe they could be managers, be part of the leadership team, and grow and learn,” says Moman, adding that what makes the lodges unique is that “there’s genuine warmth and spirit of welcome that make us be part of the family.”

Today, Volcanoes Safaris is a leader in great ape ecotourism and conservation, operating three gorilla lodges and two chimpanzee lodges across Uganda and Rwanda, with 300 staff members from the surrounding areas. 

Why investing in people and wildlife matters

Wildlife protection is a key tenet for many top safari companies. After all, without wildlife, tourism falters. Many safaris also support local communities through jobs, training, and guest donations. Still, Khabo says African-owned lodges go further, ensuring their impact is more deeply rooted in the surrounding communities.

(Here's how luxury safaris make a difference.)

One of the most striking examples is the Batwa people, some of Central Africa’s earliest inhabitants. For 60,000 years, they lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. During the 1990s, they were evicted without compensation from their ancestral rainforests in Uganda, Rwanda, and the DRC when governments began opening national parks to protect mountain gorillas. Having no agricultural traditions, land titles, or alternative livelihoods, the Batwa suffered a devastating loss of cultural identity and were left with nothing. 

When Moman was setting up his first lodge, he saw firsthand how the Batwa struggled to survive in nearby shantytowns. Initially, he brought guests to witness their plight—but he quickly realized he didn’t want to exploit human misery as a tourist attraction. Instead, he took action and decided to build Gahinga Batwa Village near Mount Gahinga Lodge—providing permanent housing, a community center, and farmland for over 100 people. Lodges “should not exist as isolated islands and isolated places for the rich without connecting to the world,” he says.

Beyond housing, Volcanoes Safaris also helps the Batwa with healthcare and education. “Some Batwa kids from our Batwa Village are coming top of the class,” Moman says. The company has also created the Kyambura Buffer Zone, a protected area that prevents chimpanzees from being poached and stops wildlife from encroaching on farms.

(Here are the four best safari trips that support local communities.)

Other African-owned safari companies are making a difference in other ways. Since the beginning, Batoka Africa has integrated community projects to support local economies. For example, one staff member belongs to a women’s sewing collective that crafts the lodge’s amenity kits, bags, and napkins, some of which are available for guests to purchase.

ABC assists with alternative livelihoods so people can generate income without burning trees and selling charcoal for revenue. The company also trains and encourages female guides, bringing more women into an industry historically dominated by men. Through the African Bush Camps Foundation, Ndlovu ties conservation to community empowerment—but for him, the goal is more than sustainability; it’s regeneration.

“It’s the holistic full picture where we tell and live our story,” he says. “A story told by somebody who speaks like them, looks like them, and has the same background as them to inspire others to believe this is an industry and a career that we can build and have a meaningful and impactful agenda around the places we operate.”