20 Years of ROAR AFRICA

The privilege of experiencing Africa also carries a responsibility to protect what makes it extraordinary. Over twenty years, your journeys have supported guides and trackers, lodges and conservation areas, pilots and craftspeople, families and communities across the continent. Your generosity has helped fund education, conservation, scholarships and opportunities that extend far beyond any itinerary. During COVID, when travel stopped and livelihoods across Africa were suddenly at risk, we protected every member of our team and the people who depended upon them. Through our work with conservation partners across the continent, through rhino protection with Zeitz Foundation, through the Teenage Mother Project in Rwanda, through the SA College of Tourism, Tracker Academy and through our Women's Empowerment Retreats travel has become a means of investing in the people and places we believe in.

None of that happens without you. And thus, you are integral to our story and the story we will continue to build into the next twenty years.

One question followed me from the earliest days of ROAR AFRICA: Where were the women?

Where were the African women guides, trackers, pilots, conservationists and leaders? Answering that question evolved into our Women's Empowerment Retreats. Since our first gathering in 2019, more than seventy extraordinary women speakers and guests have joined us across South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and next in Tanzania. Scholarships have been funded. Businesses have been started. Documentaries have been made. TED Talks have been given. Books have been written. Women have found one another, backed one another and opened doors for those coming behind them. The first female tracker we ever placed on a ROAR AFRICA journey ran to meet me at the airport, threw her arms around me and said: "Thank you for making me important."

On another retreat, a male guide spent days watching a female tracker working with our guests. He had previously expressed doubts that his own daughter could ever do this work. Four days later, he came back to us. "Yes," he said. "My daughter can do this job."

That is why our credo remains: If African women rise, wildlife will thrive. Because the power of perception matters. We cannot be what we cannot see.

Looking back, I am proud we never accepted that safari had to remain what it had always been. We brought new voices into the wilderness, the poet and philosopher David Whyte worked with me to co-host retreats, giving language to something we had long struggled to describe, what happens to us in the wild. We have created journeys around art, architecture, wine, food, women, conservation and awe: The Greatest Safari on Earth, the first of its kind with Emirates. And next year, world-renowned chef Francis Mallmann and I will co-host Wild Heart, Open Flame in the Okavango Delta at Xigera. Each an industry first, and each a decision of our singular judgment and taste. Perhaps, in our own small way, we have helped move the definition of luxury African travel away from acquisition towards connection. From how much can be fitted in, to how deeply it can be felt. From Africa as the backdrop, to Africa the protagonist. From simply seeing wildlife to understanding what is required to protect it. From observing African talent to putting African expertise, leadership and voices exactly where they belong: at the center. That, to me, is immense progress.

We do not believe the future of African travel is about more. We will remain intentionally intimate. Highly curated. Deeply personal. Relentless about quality. We will continue searching for extraordinary people and places, protecting wildness wherever we can, investing in African women and ensuring that the benefits of travel remain here, on African soil. And we will continue raising the bar, quietly, confidently and without compromise.

The chief engineer from Emirates on the Greatest Safari on Earth said to me on our last trip: "Sometimes you have to look behind you to understand how far you've come." I have thought about it ever since. And when I look back over these twenty years, what I see most clearly is not the destinations we have visited or even the things ROAR AFRICA has achieved.

I see people. Guests who took a chance on us twenty years ago and still travel with us today. Families whose children have grown up coming to Africa with us. Partners who believed in an idea before there was proof it would work. Guides, trackers, pilots, porters, conservationists, hoteliers, airlines and communities who have welcomed our guests so generously and continue to believe in my wildest ideas. And, above all else, an extraordinary team who has poured its heart into making every journey matter.

Twenty years may be the milestone. But you are the measure of it.

Thank you for traveling with us. Thank you for believing in us. Thank you for your generosity. And thank you for what, together, we have been able to give back to Africa.

Written by Deborah Calmeyer, Founder and CEO of ROAR AFRICA

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