Sustainable and Responsible Travel
Our prime motivation is a breathless urgency to conserve Africa’s wildlife and iconic wild spaces. Without the wildlife that has roamed free across our planet for millions of years, we will experience a profound loneliness of spirit.
A responsible safari not only takes one on a transformative journey that grants a deeper understanding of self, but it also protects and supports local communities and wildlife – something that is essential to all human life as one of our greatest sources of joy. When you travel with us, you will become a custodian of the wild, directly helping to solve some of our planet's most critical social, economic, and environmental problems.
As we often say, you will arrive as explorers and leave as restorers.
To share Africa's wild beauty and wonder with intrepid explorers is a privilege that comes with great responsibility.
Our role as Africa specialists is to provide conscious, ultra-luxe, insider travel experiences on our home continent, showcasing the places and people we know and love so that you are given the space, peace and silence to be still. But our hope is also that every journey we create returns our guests to the world a slice kinder, a slice more gentle and a lot more aware of what is at stake.
Passive ignorance of environmental issues affecting our planet is simply not an option.
Our Partners Echo Our Values
Ever conscious of the carbon footprint created by movement around the world, minimizing the environmental impact of our travel is of paramount importance to us.
Our commitment to this includes purchasing carbon credits equivalent to our emissions, utilizing South Pole, an emissions reduction strategist, and Stand for Trees, a REDD+ initiative (REDD stands for 'reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation') to maximize and certify these credits for tangible, measurable impact across the continent. Calculating our emissions goes far beyond long-haul flights and includes game drives, small aircraft and human waste.
Conservation Tourism
When our guests witness first-hand the detrimental effects of drought and climate change on natural habitats and phenomena like the Great Migration, their first inclination is to help. We have initiatives in motion that thread sustainability leadership and expert-led conservation throughout our journeys from start to finish.
We firmly believe that it is imperative our guests experience a concrete connection with the positive and immediate impact their investment in responsible travel to Africa generates on the ground.
“How and where we travel matters. By traveling with ROAR AFRICA, you will become a custodian of the wild, directly helping to solve some of our planet's most critical social, economic, and environmental problems.”
We choose to partner exclusively with people and properties that echo our values.
Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (SWT)
The sight of the tiny elephant orphans trotting out from their enclosures every morning at Kenya’s Sheldrick Trust swathed in their colorful Swahili blankets is a poignant reminder of the casualties in man’s destructive nature.
SA College For Tourism (SACT)
The South African College for Tourism (SACT) is a game-changing women’s empowerment initiative and a not-for-profit organization based in Graaff-Reinet, that was founded by Dr Anton and Gaynor Rupert in 2001, in partnership with international agencies and public donors.
Save the Elephants
The Save The Elephants Foundation (STE) sees these magnificent creatures as Africa’s gardeners and landscape engineers who plant seeds and create habitats wherever they roam.
The Tracking Academy
The Tracking Academy is another division of SACT’s philanthropic endeavors that is based upon teaching one of our most indigenous art forms, the tracking of animals in the wild.
The Zeitz Foundation
By creating and supporting projects that promote an inclusive, holistic paradigm of conservation, resulting in enhanced livelihoods and improved intercultural dialogue, the Zeitz Foundation aims to achieve long-lasting positive impact and sustainability across the continent.
Imibala Trust
Watching a child’s face light up at the sight of a new school uniform, often their very first, is an emotional and rewarding experience that never loses appeal for us.
Wild Africa Fund
The Wild Africa Fund – founded by veteran conservationists Peter and Corie Knights - takes a multipronged approach to tackling complex conservation issues like poaching, wildlife trafficking, bushmeat consumption, and human-wildlife conflict throughout Africa. We are proud to support their critical, impact-led work.
Uthando
We’ve long partnered with Uthando Tours in Cape Town in our quest to give our clients an authentic philanthropic travel and cultural introduction to the city.
Questions About Responsible Travel
“If African women rise, wildlife will thrive”
“The difference between a broken community and a thriving one is the presence of women who are valued.” - MICHELLE OBAMA
These words underpin everything that we at ROAR AFRICA do to uplift the status of women in the communities we serve – as do the words of American philanthropist Gregory Carr, whose response when asked what should be done to protect African wildlife, was a resounding: ‘Girls in school. It’s the number one thing we will do for this planet’. We couldn’t agree more and we can’t think of any sector of the global population that is embracing the value of their contribution more through travel than African women.
We’ve watched with pride as our trips have helped to shatter the plethora of geographical, gender and social barriers that remain, and have been awed by an increase in the number of female pilots, guides, trackers, conservationists, anti-poachers and chefs who are entering the male-dominated safari industry. As a female-founded and led company, our commitment to empower those African women whose communities continue to perpetuate the values of inequality, informs every itinerary we create.
We’re particularly proud that our founder and CEO Deborah Calmeyer was personally recognized for the work that we do for women’s empowerment in Conde Nast Traveler's ‘TOP 30 Women Who Travel Power List’ - a roundup of ‘bold, adventurous, self-identifying female travelers’. It’s an honor that belongs to each and every woman in ROAR AFRICA and beyond,’ says Deborah.
For more information on our 2025 Women’s Empowerment Retreat, click here.
“Travel is an accelerator for growth and it is critical we do not skim the surface of the very many beautiful places we visit.”
Every trip that we curate has at its core, a commitment to the preservation and support of the people, animals and environments that we visit. These values are intrinsic to everything that we put our name to and as such we only work with properties that echo these values too. Rather than viewing Africa as a once-off, bucket-list destination, we prefer to see it as a vital investment in self and therefore a place that needs to be visited time and again.
We have seen first-hand the remarkable effects that being in the bush has on our clients and having worked with leading conservationist and psychiatrist Dr Ian McCallum – we know that the deep, instinctual reconnection that happens when one is in the bush goes back to ancient times and the very beginning of our journey as humans. We have learnt in our own journey as a company that just as we need to take care of the land and animals, we need to take care of ourselves too.
With this in mind, every trip is designed to create a safe and comfortable space for our guests to reconnect to themselves. And in so doing their travel makes a profound and powerful difference that supports and sustains fragile wilderness areas.
Founder and CEO, ROAR AFRICA
