Ethical Travel and our Dedication to African Development
Ethical safaris are relate to sustainable and responsible tourism. Ethical safaris, or ethical tourism simply put, refers to a style of tourism where the impact of visiting tourists benefits the people and the environment in the destinations that those tourists visit. We could also call it positive impact tourism. Think about it like leaving a place in a better condition than you found it.
Now tourism is a major source of income generation for any destination, but particularly for African nations, where it provides an imperative source of revenue needed to propel developmental growth, infrastructure, and institution building.
In Botswana tourism accounts for over 12% of the GDP.
That’s a lot. The truth however, is that the revenue generated by tourism for Botswana should be more than double this figure. If every dollar paid by each tourist visiting Botswana stayed in the country, and if all tour companies paid their taxes, the income generated would increase the share of tourism to over 25% of the GDP. This income generation would benefit both small business and the public sector tenfold and would give the well-run country a massive advantage in its fight against poverty, HIV Aids, poaching, and its fight for environmental protection.
We want to ensure that money spent on Botswana tourism, is sent towards the country, and not taken away from it.
The African Wild is a 100% Botswana owned and registered company.
We only work with ethical lodges and operators. We not only ensure that every dollar spent on any of our tours and safaris stays within the country, we also actively engage with the government of the country on promoting lasting developmental practices. We work with and sponsor a number of different communities based in different areas of the country and promote and provide both local and community development initiatives. We are engaged in a number of sustainable and environmental initiatives set up to protect wildlife within Botswana and neighboring countries. We also actively encourage all lodges in Botswana to directly benefit and beneficiate locals.
We appeal to all tourists to ensure that their tour is ethical and that their hard earned dollars stay in the destination country they visit. This can be as simple as asking for a tax certificate or requesting that their payments and bank transfers are made directly into Botswana bank accounts.
Frequently asked questions on Ethical Safaris
A safari where the money stays in the country the wildlife lives in, where local people hold real jobs rather than token ones, and where wildlife takes priority over the photograph. It is a checkable standard, not a feeling.
With a Botswana-registered operator, effectively all of it — your payment goes into a Botswana bank account and is taxed here. With an offshore operator, the margin leaves before you do. Ask any operator directly which country your payment is banked in.
Ask for their tax clearance certificate and ask which country your payment will be banked in. Both are simple questions with simple answers, and reluctance to answer either tells you what you need to know.
No. Because we sell direct rather than through agencies, there is no additional margin. In practice, booking with a local operator is usually the cheaper route as well as the better one.
A registered Botswanan NGO affiliated with The African Wild, working to repair the relationship between communities, traditions and the natural world in northwest Botswana, around the Tsodilo Hills. It focuses on cultural revival — language, song, ancestral governance, sacred sites — and on establishing the Greater Tsodilo Biosphere as a protected area.
A proposed protected area around the Tsodilo Hills, to be ratified by Botswana’s parliament, linking communities across Tsodilo, Chukumuchu, Qangwa and Nxaunxau. It would safeguard wildlife corridors, restore sacred sites, and give those communities legal standing against extractive industry.
No baiting, no crowding a sighting, no off-road driving where it damages habitat, and no captive-wildlife interactions of any kind — no walking with lions, no elephant-back riding, no petting.
No. We are a photographic safari operator and we do not sell, arrange or facilitate hunting of any kind. We have written about the arguments around hunting in Botswana because it is a genuine and contested policy question, but our own position is straightforward: we do not participate in it.
We partner with operators who can demonstrate genuine local investment — concession and community fee payment, employment of Batswana in senior roles, and wildlife-first viewing practice. Our current partners include Wilderness Safaris, Natural Selection, Kwando Safaris and Great Plains Conservation. We are members of HATAB, the Hospitality and Tourism Association of Botswana.
It can be. Tourism concentrates vehicles, water use and waste in fragile places, and badly run tourism does real damage. But in Botswana the alternative to well-managed tourism is not empty wilderness — it is extractive industry. Concession fees, community levies and tourism employment are currently what make protecting these landscapes economically defensible.
Yes. Absolutely. We were born and raised here. We are citizens of this fine country. We have boots on the ground. We live Botswana and we know it intimately.
