If you want the real family safari experience, we think it’s difficult to beat northern Tanzania. Here you’ve got the wildlife-rich plains of the Serengeti and the dense concentration of animals in the Ngorongoro Crater. Any game drive is likely to offer a real breadth of wildlife sightings and will usually include some exciting predators.

But in addition to this, Tanzania has masses of other things you can do. Cycle through the banana plantations on the edge of the Rift Valley, take a tuk-tuk ride to the markets of Mto Wa Mbu and stop for a cookery lesson, visit the Bushmen of Lake Eyasi, walk alongside giraffe on the plains beneath Mount Meru, canoe on the Momella Lakes in Arusha National Park and climb an extinct volcano for views over Olduvai Gorge. Check out our Tanzania customer photo selection.

For more ideas on child-friendly activities check out our Tanzania with Kids blog or see our Tanzania family safari section.

Added to this, there is also the fabled Spice Island of Zanzibar, where you can round off your trip with picture-perfect white beaches and fabulous snorkelling.

Our Tanzania Safari and Beach itinerary is the perfect family blend of activity, safari and beach. We will select family-friendly accommodation to suit your budget and the ages of your children.

This is where safari all began and it’s still a great destination for family safari holidays. But (and don’t let the Kenyan tourist board catch us saying this), you have to work a little harder to make a safari here suitable for families. The choice of which area to visit is particularly important. You need to avoid the regular, well-trodden route that goes from one game park to the next, with nothing in between.

We love Laikipia, the wild and rugged region to the north of Nairobi. Here, critically, in addition to plenty of game, there are lots of activities that kids love. We’re talking rafting, swimming, camel rides, hiking (in a fun way), visits to authentic Samburu villages, climbing craggy cliffs, sunset hot chocolates, and marshmallows around the campfire. All of this will keep the children fully engaged and of course, complement perfectly the game drives that also form a key part of the trip.

Add to this the game-rich plains of the Masai Mara (deservedly famous), and the white beaches of the Indian Ocean, and you have the basis for a wonderful African family safari holiday.

To find more information, check out our Kenya family safari section or go straight to Highlights of Kenya for one of our most popular African family safaris, combining the best activities in Laikipia with wildlife viewing in the Masai Mara and finishing up with time on the beach. For ideas on child-friendly activities, see our Top 10 Activities to do in Kenya with Kids.

One of the world’s most unspoilt safari destinations, Botswana is the place for those who want a wilderness feel and an exclusive experience. The world’s largest inland delta, the Okavango truly is like nowhere else. Even flying to it, soaring over those immense flood plains, is an experience you’ll never forget.

But the wildlife (elephant, buffalo, hippo, wildebeest, giraffe, lion, zebra, and plenty more besides) is simply stupendous, and as well as game drives there’s the unique experience of heading out on the waterways with a guide in a traditional punt-like mokoro.

And if you want to add a different type of safari, there are the wild Makgadikgdi Salt pans with great walks, horse riding and the opportunity to get close to the indigenous meerkats.

Zimbabwe is back in business as the queen bee of safari destinations. The wildlife viewing here is astounding, especially in Hwange National Park, and children can join in walking safaris from the age of seven – much younger than in some other parts of Africa. And you’ll experience it all in the company of the very best wildlife guides in Africa, thanks to their long, in-depth training. Yet despite all this, there are no crowds!

Hwange is Africa’s 10th-largest national park, with many different terrains, but because it’s off so many people’s radars, you’ll probably feel like you have its wild dogs, baboons, giraffes, and other epic wildlife to yourselves. There’s a unique way to get into it too – the two-and-a-half-hour iconic safari train the Elephant Express. Parents can sip a G&T, kids can take their turn driving, and you can all ogle wildlife. There’s also the chance to go out with the Cobras Community Wildlife Protection Unit, which has brought rhinos back to Hwange. See our Zimbabwe with Kids photo guide for more.

And you get to combine all this with time at one of the world’s largest waterfalls, Victoria Falls, which is actually most impressive from the Zimbabwe side. This is the adventure capital of Africa and the perfect place to start or finish your holiday (or both), with white water-rafting, bungee-jumping, gorge high-wiring, zipline-canopy tours, canoeing, rafting, and micro lighting – to name just a few of your options. See our Highlights of Victoria Falls & Hwange itinerary for more details and our Highlights of Victoria Falls & Botswana if you’d like to travel on from the Falls to world-famous Chobe and the Okavango Delta.

This is our top pick with younger children. A drive along the famous Garden Route, either starting or finishing in Cape Town, will allow time to visit the small game reserves around Port Elizabeth. These may not have the majesty or grandeur of Kruger or the East African national parks, but, critically, they are malaria-free meaning you have no tricky malaria tablets to coax into unwilling mouths. And whilst these reserves are not vast areas of wilderness, their relatively small size means a particularly dense concentration of wildlife – keeping younger children engaged.

Many lodges in South Africa have a minimum age for game drives or require families with younger children to arrange private game-viewing excursions. Once the safari has finished, South Africa also offers a huge range of other child-friendly activities – zip-wiring, paddle boarding, cycling, swimming in rivers, and so on.

If taking malaria tablets is not an issue, Kruger National Park is absolutely superb and you can visit on a self-drive basis. This means you can take the game viewing at your own pace and do as much or as little as you want. Again this can be combined with other exciting activities or perhaps with Cape Town and some of the southern winelands.

Our Classic Cape & Garden Route includes a shorter safari that provides a great introduction to the safari experience. Our Kruger & Beach Family Safari includes more game viewing and this can be extended depending on what would suit your family. For more, check out our South Africa family holidays section and Top 10 activities in South Africa with kids.

Namibia is a vast country and the driving distances are quite long so this isn’t necessarily the ideal African safari holiday destination for families with younger children. However, if the kids are a little older (or not too fussed about being in the car), Namibia offers the chance for a serious family adventure.

There are vast sand dunes to race down, ghostly shipwrecks to visit, rocky crags to climb and remote bushmen to visit. And up in the north, there are the vast tracts of wilderness that comprise Etosha National Park, one of the continent’s great reserves. As with Kruger in South Africa, you can self-drive here so you can explore at your own pace. Check out our Namibia family holiday section for more detailed information.

Namibia is also one of the least densely populated places on Earth, so there is masses of scope for getting out into the wilderness, sleeping under the stars, or in remote lodges with nothing around.

Our Highlights of Namibia -2 Weeks includes, as the name suggests, all of the main sights and includes ample time in Etosha. Our Highlights of Namibia – 3 Weeks includes even more wildlife viewing. As ever, both itineraries can be tweaked to create the perfect safari holiday for your family. For more ideas on child-friendly activities check out Namibia with Kids.

Note that accommodation in Namibia, particularly around Etosha, fills up many months in advance (often more than a year). It’s therefore imperative that you start to plan any trip to Namibia a long way in advance.

The first thing to consider is the type of animal that can be seen in a particular park or reserve. It may be sacrilegious to a safari aficionado but we have to be honest about what animals appeal to children. Yes, we are generalising but for the most part lion, cheetah, leopard, elephant, giraffe, baboon, crocodile – tick. Small birds and endless varieties of antelope – not so much. Choose your destination with this in mind.

The second thing to consider is the concentration of animals. Again, many experienced safari-goers will choose less visited and more remote parks and with good reason. These offer a more untouched experience, and the chance to get out into the wilds of Africa, far away from other tourists, and experience that ‘Out of Africa’ feeling.

However, the more well-known wildlife reserves are famous for a reason. Kruger National Park (South Africa), Etosha (Namibia), the Serengeti and Ngorongoro (Tanzania), Hwange National Park (Zimbabwe), Chobe and Okavango Delta (Botswana), and the Masai Mara (Kenya) all have particularly high concentrations of animals.

The animals here are more accustomed to tourist vehicles and do not run away when a jeep approaches. As a result, within a relatively short space of time, you can see a surprising range of (interesting, child-engaging) wildlife. Yes, there may be other tourists around but if you choose the right camp, and know where to go, you can still ‘get away from it all’.

Having selected your destination and perhaps with an idea of which national parks you want to visit, the next thing to do is to come up with the right itinerary. And this is key. This is where our expertise really comes into play.

In our experience, children won’t want to do day after day of vehicle-based safaris. A couple of days is fine, but back-to-back game drives day in and day out won’t work.

The key to a successful African safari family holiday is to incorporate a mixture of elements throughout. The game drives are the foundation of the trip and will be the highlight for the children. After all, what child wouldn’t go wild for close-up encounters with lions, giraffes, buffalos, leopards and elephants?

BUT the game drives have to be interspersed with other activities that take place outside the vehicle. We’re talking bike rides, swimming in waterfalls, visiting villages, learning how to make a bow and arrow, exploring wineries, hiking through coffee plantations, and so on.

All of the countries that we have highlighted above have been selected precisely because they offer superb safaris, but also a great range of activities that complement the safari. There may be other destinations that are fantastic for game viewing but we don’t recommend them for a family safari holiday purely because there isn’t enough else to do. This really is key and we can’t stress it enough.

Roughly speaking, for every day spent on a game drive, the next day needs to be spent doing something different, and we don’t just mean driving on to the next national park. All our itineraries have been designed with this (perhaps surprisingly simple?) formula in mind. But remember that every single holiday that we design is tailor-made for your family. Our sample itineraries are there to whet the appetite and show you what you could do and we will then tweak this to ensure that we get the perfect itinerary for you.

For inspiration take a look at our Tanzania itineraries, Kenya itineraries, South Africa itineraries, and Namibia itineraries. Or if you don’t know where to start, contact us and we can give you bespoke advice.

There is no hard and fast answer to this. Even the youngest children (toddlers and upwards) will enjoy a game drive but their attention span will be short. They might manage an hour or possibly two in a game reserve rich in wildlife where there are no lengthy gaps between spotting (interesting) animals. Longer than this and their interest will start to wane. (Yes, we are speaking from experience. Liddy’s 4-year-old loved a game drive in Amakhala in South Africa but after 10 minutes looking at two huge rhinos just five metres from the vehicle, looked around and said ‘I’m bored now, can we go on?’).

Once children are seven or eight, they will enjoy a slightly longer game drive. We’re talking perhaps three or four hours – and again there needs to be a relatively high concentration of wildlife. Interest will quickly start to dissipate if there are long stretches with nothing to see, so the particular park or conservation area needs to be chosen with care.

Older children (12 plus) may last longer still, but realistically, even for older children, a half-day safari is probably enough in one go. The ideal itinerary would have a morning game drive that can be extended if everyone is engaged and loving it, but that can finish at lunch if the family has had enough. And then an optional one again in the afternoon for those who are interested.

Again we can’t stress enough the need for careful planning when designing an African family safari holiday. All of this needs to be taken into account. There needs to be scope to extend or cut short the game drives depending on how everyone is feeling.

It’s very safe, or we wouldn’t be arranging family safaris! All camps and lodges in our destinations have strict safety controls, including either electric fences or regular patrols by trained safari staff (sometimes armed with spears or a bow and arrow), and strict safety guidelines apply in many camps: for example, guests must keep on the camp paths and cannot walk around after dark unless escorted by a member of staff. Safety is of utmost importance and good practice will be explained to you all on arrival.