Responsible Travel

At Baobab Adventure we recognise the potential our trips have to positively or negatively affect local people, economies, wildlife, resources, environments, and habitats. We firmly believe that our trips should benefit local people, environments, or at the very least not harm them.

We recognise that we have gained so much from the countries we operate in, so we also try to ensure that we give something back to those who are unlikely to benefit so much from tourism. We have a number of charities that we support.

Our Commitment to running our trips responsibly

  • At the start of every trip our Tour Leaders, as part of the pre departure meeting talk to our travellers about our environmental policy and how to travel responsibly
  • All our trucks are regularly serviced and maintained to ensure maximum fuel efficiency. This is all done locally, providing work for not only our crew, but local mechanics and workshops
  • We have speed limiters fitted to all our vehicles, not only for safety reasons, but also to ensure fuel efficiency
  • Our trucks are fully supplied with treated drinking water, reducing the need for single-use plastic water bottles. We also advise our groups on using water responsibly. Water is a precious resource in many of the areas we travel through
  • The fact that the majority of our trips are camping trips means that the AC or lights can't be left on for too long and our groups aren't likely to waste water as they help us to refill it!
  • We encourage our travellers to buy food from local markets, whenever possible, not supermarkets. Spending locally is a very firm commitment of Baobab Adventure. We try to ensure that as much of our trip costs as possible are spent locally. If we do use hostel/ hotel accommodation we always choose small locally run establishments, not international chains
  • We encourage our travellers to buy their own snack and drink supplies from small local suppliers and to purchase souvenirs locally and responsibly
  • We provide reusable bags for our travellers to use when they are food shopping for the group, to avoid the use of plastic bags
  • We always dispose of litter and waste appropriately
  • Unless unavoidable, we always travel on designated roads to avoid damage to local habitats
  • When game viewing we ensure we abide by park rules, such as not getting too close to animals, or making loud noises
  • We are respectful of local people and customs and advise our travellers not to take pictures of local people without asking their permission first
  • We do not buy endangered species products and advise our groups on this also
  • We ensure that when we leave a camping area/campsite we have suitably disposed of all our rubbish and fully extinguished any fire
  • We ensure that we and our groups do not endanger local wildlife and our generally respectful of animal welfare. Ask for our Animal Welfare Policy

We can provide you with information to give to your travellers, on sustainable pre trip preparations for their trip. For example removing unnecessary packaging from toiletries, bringing rechargeable torches etc

Projects We Support

Over the years we have supported a number of projects that would not normally benefit from tourism. We currently support

A Children's Home in Harare, Zimbabwe – we are not going to name it in order to respect the Home and the children's confidentiality.

Over the years we have supported the Home in a number of ways- with food donations, tools and seeds for the garden to enable sustainable food production, a borehole, educational materials, sports equipment, mattresses and bedding…Probably our most enthusiastically received support however is our annual day trip out for the 100 or so children, plus staff. We use our overland vehicles and crew to take the children out for a day. There's usually an educational element, a nice lunch, some fun games, lots of singing, clapping and laughing and lots of promises requested of us that we'll do the same next year! Our next scheduled trip is November 2025.

C-Sema Tanzania - (www.sematanzania.org). - C-Sema operates a free, 24-hour National Child Helpline, receiving over 5,000 calls daily, providing children with a trusted platform to voice their concerns and seek assistance. They also work to combat online child sexual abuse and use social media to disseminate essential information on parenting, nutrition, and child protection and operate various outreach projects aimed at empowering young people, providing them with resources to shield themselves from abuse, exploitation, and neglect.

Jackie and Chris were able to visit this charity in 2024 during a trip to Zanzibar and were so impressed by what they saw and heard that they decided to provide financial support to assist the team of volunteers that help run the phone lines and services.

Toilet Twinning

Our trips often pass through remote areas where toilet facilities do not exist. Hence the truck shovel and a walk into the bush! This really does help focus your mind on the importance of good toilet facilities! Imagine how delighted we were then to come across Toilet Twinning. Toilet Twinning raises funds to enable people living in some of the poorest communities on earth to have clean water, a decent toilet, and to learn about hygiene - a vital combination that prevents the spread of disease, reduces the number of deaths among children, and brings hope for the future.

For people in poor communities, a hole in the ground is literally a life saver-preventing women from the risk of attack as they find somewhere private to squat, and shielding children from preventable diarrhoeal diseases.

We have twinned the 'shovels' on all our Africa trucks, with latrines in Africa. For each shovel we have twinned a toilet is built in a need identified area and an accompanied safe water, sanitation and hygiene project is implemented.