Staff Writer
Ultimate Safaris contributed more than N$18 million to community and conservation support in the Kunene region in 2025.
More than N$10 million went to the Doro !Nawas Conservancy and the Doros Joint Management Area, a joint venture between the Sorris Sorris, Uibasen Twyfelfontein and Doro Nawas conservancies.
This included N$3 million in direct cash payments to conservancies through bed levies, N$6.7 million in salaries and employee benefits, and N$700,000 in conservation and community benefits.
Ultimate Safaris managing director Tristan Cowley said the company is “extremely pleased to have been able to contribute in a way that is intended to deliver a positive, generational legacy in a year that posed extraordinary challenges and placed our business under immense pressure” and that he hopes to be able to continue doing so well into the future in “the spirit of doing good while running a sustainable business”.
The N$18 million contribution brings Ultimate Safaris’ total investment in southern Kunene since 2021 to N$100 million. The company said this figure is expected to rise once mining challenges are settled. It currently employs 50 people in southern Kunene out of 140 employees countrywide.
Through its non-profit arm, the Conservation Travel Foundation, the company invested N$7.8 million in community upliftment and conservation projects, mainly in Kunene but also across Namibia.
This included N$3.15 million for the Lion Ranger Programme, covering projects, salaries, bonuses, research and running costs. The programme is described as a “community-based lion conservation programme to limit human-lion conflict within communal farming lands and for the conservation of the desert-adapted lion population”.
More than N$1.7 million supported conservation work by organisations such as Africat, the Giraffe Conservation Foundation and the Northwest Cheetah Project. Over N$1 million went directly to communities where Ultimate Safaris operates.
At the Granietkop Campsite, a conservancy-owned business that the company helped renovate and reopen, N$784 000 in revenue was generated, and four jobs were created. Ultimate Safaris provides management mentoring and training at the site.
Three access control gates were built in the Doros Joint Management Area at a cost of N$360 000. The gates created six jobs and generated N$160 000 in conservation fees for conservancies between May and December 2025.
Ultimate Safaris also introduced a community and conservation levy at its camps, raising N$2 million. The funds are set aside for an economic upliftment and empowerment project in Khorixas.
