SA College for Tourism (SACT)
Some partnerships begin with a formal agreement. Ours with the SA College for Tourism began in the field — with a group of women, a shared safari and a moment that would help shape the future of ROAR AFRICA’s Women’s Empowerment work.
During our first ROAR AFRICA Women's Empowerment Retreat in 2019, guests were introduced to the remarkable work of the SA College for Tourism in Graaff-Reinet, South Africa. What they encountered was not simply a hospitality training institution, but a place of profound possibility.
They met young women in chef’s whites and front-of-house uniforms, learning the skills that would allow them to enter Africa’s safari and hospitality industries with confidence, professionalism and purpose. There was ambition in the room, but also discipline, dignity and quiet determination — the unmistakable sense of women rewriting the terms of their own futures. That visit became a catalyst.
It helped inspire a “Magic Grant” from The Helen Gurley Brown Foundation, significantly expanding the college’s training capacity. It also led ROAR AFRICA to establish an annual scholarship, funding one Zimbabwean female student each year to study at the SA College for Tourism — a commitment we have honored every year since 2019.
For ROAR AFRICA, this relationship sits at the heart of what we believe: that travel can do more than reveal a continent. It can create pathways, open doors and connect our guests to the people and institutions shaping Africa’s future from within. It also allows our guests to see Africa through African eyes.
When you travel with ROAR AFRICA, you become part of that continuum — one in which opportunity, education and women’s leadership are inseparable from the future of conservation and hospitality in Africa.
The Hospitality Division — Opening Doors
Founded in 2001 by Dr Anton and Gaynor Rupert, the SA College for Tourism is a not-for-profit institution offering a fully sponsored, year-long training program in hospitality and tourism. Its students come from marginalized communities across Southern Africa. Many arrive having never traveled beyond their own country. Over the course of a year, they are given far more than technical training. They are introduced to the discipline, confidence and professional standards required to build meaningful careers in one of Africa’s most important industries.
By the time they graduate, students have cooked in professional kitchens, served at fine-dining events, completed workplace internships and, in some cases, spent a summer working at YMCA Camp Coniston in New England, USA — often their first international experience. The outcomes are exceptional. Within a year of completing the program, 93 to 95 percent of graduates are placed in employment or paid internships.
The Drostdy Hotel in Graaff-Reinet, also owned by the Rupert family, plays an important role in this ecosystem, committing to 30 internship positions annually. In this way, guests who stay at the hotel contribute directly to student training — both through their presence and through the hotel’s reinvested profits.
It is a model of hospitality as a pathway: one in which education, employment and opportunity come together to open doors that might otherwise have remained closed.
The Students Behind the Statistics
ROAR AFRICA's annual scholarship has supported young Zimbabwean women at SACT since 2019. Each has arrived carrying a story of resilience and left carrying a qualification and a future. Here are testimonials from some of our students.
Nicole Murisa (2020) grew up in a single-parent household in Harare, unable to afford further education. At SACT she discovered a love of culinary arts and dreamed of starting a small catering business. "SACT has the most committed and hardworking lecturers, who strove to make our lives better," she wrote. "Baie dankie."
Shalom Mazonde (2021) arrived having fought for months to secure her study visa — her mother working double shifts to fund the embassy fees. Her dream: to become a pastry chef. "By looking at my mother, I believe this is the place that opens doors to one's career."
Ivy Makumbira (2022) scored the highest results in Food & Beverage across her entire class, was selected to specialise in Professional Cookery, and was awarded a place on the YMCA international summer programme. Her trainer wrote: "She shows great potential to become a fantastic chef. I am honoured to be part of the first building blocks in her career path."
Gamuchirai Manjera (2025) specialised in Rooms Division and Wellness Therapist Assistant. She is now working part-time at a Zimbabwean guesthouse and has her sights set on a career in spa therapy — and eventually her own establishment. "Continue to change lives," she wrote to ROAR AFRICA.
The Tracker Academy — Reading the Language of the Bush
The SA College for Tourism’s second division, the Tracker Academy, trains something rarer still: the person who makes the entire safari possible.
The tracker sits at the very front of the game-viewing vehicle, reading what most of us cannot see. A footprint pressed into sand. A bent blade of grass. The flick of a tail in the distance. The difference between a monkey’s alarm call for a snake and one for a leopard. The scent carried on a shifting wind that says there is a kill nearby.
Tracking is not simply a skill. It is a language — one written in dust, sound, silence and instinct. Its ancient and could so easily be lost to us all.
“When you come on safari, the most important person for your experience is the tracker. They will hear the deep grunt of a lion from an extraordinary distance, over your chattering in the vehicle, and know exactly which direction to go. They know when it is about to rain. As the days unfold, and the longer you spend in the bush, you begin to put down the camera and start to listen, smell and see. Your own natural instincts come alive.”
— Deborah Calmeyer, Founder and CEO, ROAR AFRICA
The Tracker Academy was founded to ensure this extraordinary knowledge is not lost. Game ranger Alex van den Heever first recognized the gap in 1995 while working in the Sabi Sand Game Reserve. His tracking partner, Renias Mhlongo, whose knowledge had been shaped by growing up in the Kruger National Park, revealed the depth and precision of this ancient discipline. Yet at the time, no formal qualification existed to pass these skills on to a new generation, and no system properly recognized tracking’s critical role in conservation.
Philanthropist Gaynor Rupert helped bring Alex’s vision to life. Today, the Tracker Academy trains unemployed community members in the ancient art and science of tracking, producing graduates who go on to work in eco-tourism, anti-poaching and wildlife monitoring — all essential to the preservation of Africa’s wild places.
In the Kalahari, ROAR AFRICA is especially proud to work with Kelathilwe Malaki, Africa’s first fully qualified female tracker, whose expertise offers our guests one of the rarest forms of interpretation in the wild.
Supporting the Tracker Academy
— NYC Fundraiser, May 2026
In 2026, ROAR AFRICA donated a luxury safari experience to support a private fundraising event benefitting the Tracker Academy. Proceeds go directly toward training the next generation of trackers. If you would like to know more or get involved, please reach out to us directly.
Every ROAR AFRICA journey is designed with impact in its DNA. Our connection with SACT — both the Hospitality Division and the Tracker Academy — means that the people who make your safari exceptional are being trained, supported, and placed into meaningful careers. The guide reading the land. The chef plating your dinner at a remote lodge. The front-of-house professional who makes you feel at home ten thousand kilometres from yours. They are the heartbeat of African tourism. We are proud to play a small part in their story.
When you travel with ROAR AFRICA, you are not a bystander to this story. You are part of it.
Learn more about the SA College for Tourism at and the Tracker Academy
To travel with ROAR AFRICA, begin the conversation here .
