Discover Africa’s stories

Marvel at Kenya’s Ngong Hills with Karen Blixen. Track brown hyenas in Botswana’s remote Deception Valley with Mark and Delia Owens. Watch eight million litres of water tumble over the mighty Victoria Falls. Find out what a lioness is trying to tell you when she swishes her tail. Let your imagination travel to Africa ahead of your journey with Wilderness… so that by the time you arrive on this wild, wonderful continent, you’ll recognise the African Spirit.

 

 

 

 

Mahlangeni By Kobie Kruger

Follow Kobie Kruger’s real-life accounts of running a household and raising children in South Africa’s famed Kruger National Park. From the leopard in their garden to the grumpy hippo that makes crossing the river to town tricky, through floods and wildfires, Kruger’s love for all things wild and wonderful shines through with humour and charm.

 

Africa By David Attenborough

From the Cape to the Congo to the Kalahari, explore Africa’s wondrous, and extreme habitats with Sir David Attenborough. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p010jc6p/episodes/guide

 

Out of Africa By Karen Blixen

Out of Africa is a memoir of the trials and tribulations of a European in Africa. See colonial Kenya through the eyes of Baroness Karen Blixen, as she navigates her tumultuous love affair with the country and its people.

 

Zimbabwe

 

The Behaviour Guide to African Mammals By Richard Despard Estes

Learn about Africa’s iconic wildlife through the eyes of a behavioural biologist, before you meet them for yourself on your safari with Wilderness. This guide describes and explains why animals do what they do, as handy for the zoologist as it is for the interested traveller.

 

Victoria Falls: The Smoke That thunders The BBC Natural world

Discover life in Victoria Falls as told by a local who has fished the mighty Zambezi waters for 69 years. Meet his companions; the ransacking baboons, herds of elephants, hippos and kingfishers who call this slice of Eden in Africa home, and whose lives are ruled by the moods of the river and the whim of the rains. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nsky2

 

Wild Honey By Bookey Peek

Packed with anecdote and adventure and following on from the highly acclaimed All the Way Home, Wild Honey continues with the adventures from this wildlife sanctuary in Zimbabwe’s Matobo Hills.

 

Zambia

 

Travel Light, Move Fast By Alexandra Fuller

 

Fuller’s Africa is full of joy, reality and resilience. This story harks back to the misadventures of Fuller’s parents, in the wake of her father’s death as she returns his ashes to his farm in Zambia.

 

Swamp Lions National Geographic

 

Set in one of the toughest landscapes in Africa, ‘Swamp Lions’ follows the pride that calls Zambia’s Busanga Plains home, through poaching, violent pride dynamics and the dangers of living and hunting in swamp waters. https://www.natgeotv.com/asia/swamp-lions

 

Rewilding Africa By Grant Fowlds and Graham Spence

 

This raw account highlights these conservationists’ desperate efforts to save and restore Africa’s wildlife, navigating the consequences of war-torn countries and heavily poached regions on the illicit wildlife trade. Fowlds and Spence travel to some of the richest habitats in Africa, highlighting the important effect that wildlife tourism has on conservation, and the effect the survival of wildlife has on our very existence.

 

Namibia

 

Vanishing Kings By Philip Stander 

 

One for the big cat-lovers, this unique record of Namibia’s elusive lions uncovers the secret lives of these remarkable desert-adapted predators.

 

From Deserts to Grasslands (Our Planet – episode 4) David Attenborough

Part of this episode in David Attenborough’s remarkable docu-series focuses on Namibia’s desert-adapted elephants as they search for sustenance in the arid landscape they call home. https://www.netflix.com/title/80049832

 

Life is Like a Kudu Horn By Margaret Jacobsohn

 

The story, mishaps, conflicts and triumphs, of a Capetonian turned Namibian, passionate about conservation and tourism in this remote, unique Southern African country. In her words, ‘Famed for its spectacular landscapes and gloriously unclad geology, Namibia is a country that wears its skeleton on the outside’.

 

Botswana

 

The Behaviour Guide to African Mammals By Richard Despard Estes

Learn about Africa’s iconic wildlife through the eyes of a behavioural biologist, before you meet them for yourself on your safari with Wilderness. This guide describes and explains why animals do what they do, as handy for the zoologist as it is for the interested traveller.

Surviving Paradise – A Family Tale Netflix

 

This Netflix documentary explores the vast Okavango Delta as familial bonds between prides, herds and packs are tested through drought, famine and flood. https://www.netflix.com/za/title/81353947

 

Cry of the Kalahari By Mark and Delia Owens

 

In the mid 70s, Mark and Delia Owens did what no sane zoologist had ever done; packed up and moved to a remote section of Botswana’s Kalahari desert to study predators. Far removed from any civilisation, they had only each other and the wildlife they studied as company.

 

Rwanda

 

A Thousand Hills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It By Stephen Kinzer

 

Stephen Kinzer tells the dramatic story of Rwandan president Paul Kagame, his humble upbringing, his rise to power and Rwanda’s emergence as one of the most promising countries in the developing world after its devastating genocide.

 

Africa By David Attenborough

From the Cape to the Congo to the Kalahari, explore Africa’s wondrous, and extreme habitats with Sir David Attenborough. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p010jc6p/episodes/guide

 

Gorillas in the Mist By Dian Fossey

 

Fossey’s extraordinary passion and efforts to ensure the future of mountain gorillas and their precious rain forest habitat, in her own words. Her personal thoughts intertwined with ground-breaking research make for an extraordinary account of her time with these phenomenal primates.