Akagera National Park Safari

Africa's best-kept safari secret

Akagera National Park sits in the east of Rwanda, along the border with Tanzania. It covers 1,122 square kilometres of savannah, acacia woodland, wetland, and a chain of lakes fed by the Akagera River. Until 2015, it had no lions. Then African Parks — the same organisation that manages Malawi's parks and Zambia's Liuwa Plain — reintroduced seven lions from South Africa. Today the pride has grown to over 30 animals.

This is big-game country. Elephant, buffalo, hippo, crocodile, zebra, topi, waterbuck, impala, reedbuck, and giraffe. Leopard are present but rarely seen. The lions are often found around the central lake system, and on a good morning drive you will hear them before you see them.

The park is also extraordinary for birds. The papyrus swamps along the eastern lakes hold species found nowhere else in Rwanda — the papyrus gonolek, the white-winged warbler, the shoebill (rarely, but it is there). The open acacia country holds raptors: martial eagle, bateleur, long-crested eagle, African fish eagle, and the enormous secretary bird.

I recommend spending two to three nights in Akagera. We do an early morning drive, a boat safari on Lake Ihema, and a long afternoon drive. By the end of the second day most guests have seen more wildlife than they expected — and have the photographs to prove it.