A flight by plane or helicopter, hours on the savannah in brilliant 4X4s, a private infinity pool, electricity supplied in abundance by generators… Safari in Africa is an activity that essentially consumes a very scarce resource and is increasingly valuable. . According to the International Energy Agency, however, Africa is responsible for only about 3% of global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions and 7% of total emissions (for 18% of the world’s population). At the recent African climate summit organized by the United Nations on August 29, the continent showed its readiness to play its full part in the changes taking place.
Safari in Africa attracts millions of visitors, lured by the preserved environment itself. Today, it is impossible to ignore the impact of these activities, and even more so in the world’s most protected areas. As with other industries, travel matters and acts. Here are some virtuous examples that predict others in the future, inevitably.
Electric 4X4 in its infancy
The 4X4 is truly the iconic safari vehicle. These pickup-type vehicles are generally customized to be larger, more comfortable, more durable, and heavier. They therefore consume large amounts of expensive fuel in addition to being polluting. But there are solutions… The fastest way is not to destroy these machines to replace them, but to adapt them. There is a technology for this – “retrofitting”, which consists of converting a thermal vehicle (gasoline and often diesel) into an electric vehicle. Carwatt is a French company in this field. In short, they remove the entire engine block from the 4×4 to replace it with second life batteries. This makes it possible to recycle batteries that are too soon discarded and still difficult to recycle, but also to stop using oil, which is expensive to buy, but also to transport to isolated areas to replace it with clean energy (ideally solar).
In Tanzania, e-motion Africa has partnered with Carwatt to develop this technology for so-called sit-down cars; ones that playfully cruise around cabins as opposed to touring cars traveling long distances. Their autonomy allows them to travel a little over 150 km and therefore cover vast areas… In silence. Also preceding, Grumeti Hills Lodge (at the gates of the Serengeti Park, still in Tanzania), which offers its clients quiet and clean safaris. If the wildlife is not used to the silence of these steel vehicles and may be surprised (especially the elephants), then the safari is more exclusive.
Solar instead of generators
The African Lodge is by its very nature isolated from the world, even that which characterizes it. The most beautiful bush landscapes cannot be imagined by electric wires. To do without these pillars, until now there was only one solution: the generator. An oil-squeezing engine that disrupts the silence with its mechanical noise. This was forgetting Africa’s most abundant energy, the sun. Thanks to the drop in the price of solar panels and the increase in battery capacity, solar energy is now becoming the continent’s star resource. As of December 2021, it is estimated that 40% of the world’s solar potential is in Africa, with only 1% of solar panels. But for ten years, many projects have emerged on the continent: in Morocco, Togo, Senegal, South Africa.
There are many hostels that are equipped with a pass. In Botswana, British chain Red Carnation has fully furnished its design Xigera Safari Lodge, located in the heart of the Okavango Delta. Project Manager Mike Myers proudly displays the solar array that was created to power the camp and its rooms today. The batteries are developed with Tesla technology… Need I mention Elon Musk’s South African ancestry? 100% of the electricity consumed here is therefore solar powered, from the sewage treatment plant to the boats that sail the Okavango River and of course all the luxury lodge needs in nowhere. The key is absolute silence.
More affordable (and larger) lodges are also not hesitating to switch to solar electricity. Among them is Mara Serena Lodge (of the Serena chain owned by the Aga Khan), a lodge with about a hundred rooms in the Masai Mara Game Reserve (Kenya) that opened its solar farm in late 2019. Its 74 rooms are illuminated with this technology. A test run that foreshadows many others for East Africa’s leading hotel group.
More water efficient housing
The shed must have water, lots of water. Often located on the edge of a water point (river, lake or reservoir), lodges take this fact into account from the beginning of the design project. Except that the seasons we like to go on safari are often the driest. Those where water is the rarest, but also the most necessary for wildlife, population. Several scandals broke out in the Kalahari desert (Botswana). The huts boasted the beauty of their giant pools as the hungry streams struggled to water the cattle and meet the needs of the Bushmen. The involved company had to make investments to collect and preserve the precious dram. Today, in Botswana and elsewhere, each lodge has its own treatment plant, allowing more than 95% of the clean water consumed to be released into nature. But also to collect water in good times.
Some lodges in Tanzania, including the Mara River Post in the Serengeti, are creating an ingenious harvesting system that stores scarce but abundant rainwater in giant cisterns, waiting months without rain. It is also about the possibility of recycling this water. In the driest regions, Namibia, South Africa, northern Kenya, very deep wells are dug to test the water table. That water must then be recycled and returned to nature.
In South Africa’s very dry Madikwe Game Reserve, African Bush Lodge had equality to solve. how to have a 1600 m² lawn in a dry environment for six months of the year without harming the scarce water resources of the national park? The cabin decided to operate in an almost closed circle. Water is taken directly from the land where it is used for irrigation. So it naturally returns to feed the underground spring that feeds the various wells. A circular system of irrigation canals makes it possible to recycle and then use almost all the water.
Use (genuine) local produce
We greedily promote polluting private jets, but forget how some lodges, often the most luxurious ones, lived in the past in an absurd logic. Fresh flower petals fly daily to the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater, organic salmon eaten on a plate in the shade of an acacia tree, prawns from Mozambique tasted 6,000 kilometers away. Food is one of the keys to luxury. A Relais & Châteaux accommodation can only be approved if the table meets certain requirements. However, terroir in the bush is limited… And that is an understatement.
Solutions, again virtuous, emerge. Created in the Cradle of Humanity (Cradle of Humanity), 52 Cradle, not far from Johannesburg, has centered its entire kitchen around the produce of its permaculture vegetable garden. Bashai Lodge in Karatu, not far from the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, has also created a huge permaculture vegetable garden. Maintained and cultivated by Tanganyika Expeditions, it supplies fresh (and local) food to many lodges in the region. Those delicacies that have no place there have also been banned. No more rose petals unless you are in the great lakes of Kenya where they grow. No more grilled prawns that have run out after a few thousand kilometers of travel. No more smoked salmon that has changed hemispheres. We use local and that’s fine.
Source: Le Figaro
