Discover Africa Safaris Turns Local Expertise Into Two Decades of Growth

As safari booking increasingly moves online and impersonal, Andre Van Kets has spent twenty years keeping Discover Africa Safaris tailor-made — rooted in on-the-ground expertise and relationships with clients and partners across Africa.

The people most qualified to plan an African safari are rarely sitting in the country booking it.

Andre Van Kets, co-founder of Discover Africa Safaris, has spent two decades closing that distance. Based in Cape Town, he and his team travel to source destinations three or four times a year, building tailor-made trips across Southern and East Africa that agents based abroad rarely match firsthand.

“At the foundation, it’s passion. As co-founder of a safari tour operator, I have always had a deep, intimate love for Africa, and that authenticity translates directly into a more appealing product,” Van Kets says.

The model runs on three inputs: deep knowledge of specific destinations, direct relationships with lodges and ground handlers, and detailed conversations with travelers about pace, dining, budget and how wild the trip should feel. Those conversations set the tier. First-time travelers don’t get the wildest itineraries — the company matches them to familiar routes like Cape Town and Kruger, saving deeper, more remote trips for repeat guests who ask for them.

Much of that trust is built individually. Discover Africa puts nearly every client on a video call before booking, and follows up after each trip with a debrief call and a personal keepsake — a practice that often turns satisfied travelers into referrals. AI now handles some of the administrative work behind the scenes, giving planners more time with clients.

“It comes down to integrity and building real human connection with our partners, particularly in an era where automation and AI are disrupting relationships elsewhere,” Van Kets says.

Discover Africa built its base in South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe first, expanded into Tanzania and Kenya in 2014, added gorilla-trekking countries as clients returned for deeper trips, and brought the Republic of Congo into its portfolio in 2025.

Twenty years in, the model still rests on staying close to the ground and treating clients and partners as relationships worth keeping, not transactions to close. Van Kets ties that discipline to a broader payoff too: a safari economy that funds conservation and supports rural livelihoods. Congo, added last year, won’t be the last addition.

Learn more about Discover Africa at discoverafrica.com