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Billionaire Safari Lodges

Douglas Rogers March 27, 2007

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slidshow See our slideshow of 10 billionaire safaris lodges.

Why all this investment in the continent? “Wealthy people fall in love with Africa and then want to help it,” said Dennis Pinto, the Kenyan-born Managing Director of luxury-travel company Micato Safaris, which sends clients to some of the most exclusive lodges in Africa. “Paul Tudor Jones started Grumeti as a conservation project. A lot of the funds from wealthy guests staying there go to local communities.”

But he also notes that with such favorable exchange rates, one’s billons can go that much a further in Africa than it can elsewhere. “You can get several thousand acres of land in Africa with the kind of money that won’t get you a townhouse in Manhattan. And who doesn’t want to sip a martini and gaze out at miles and miles of their own green plains?"

Not that foreign billionaires owning safari lodges in Africa is totally new. Saudi tycoon Adnan Khashoggi made the Ol Pejeta Ranch House in the Sweetwaters Game Reserve near Mount Kenya his private hideaway for many years before losing it (legend has it) in a gambling debt to Lonrho chairman Tiny Rowland. The property is more rambling ranch house than modern luxury, but staying in the Khashoggi suite with its access to a private swimming pool has a certain Bond-villain allure to it. Ol Pejeta is now managed by Serena Hotels, which is owned by billionaire prince The Aga Khan.

Post-September 11, it appears that a handful of wealthy Arabs are turning their attention to East Africa, perhaps after finding it more difficult to invest in the West. Saudi soft-drink mogul Adel Aujan owns Rani Resorts, which has recently added Lugenda Lodge in northern Mozambique to the three deluxe island lodges it had already built off the Mozambique coast. Mr. Aujan fell in love with Africa on a hunting trip to Zimbabwe, and the tents and décor of Lugenda are a throwback to the romantic 1920s Edwardian age of East African safaris, when wealthy westerners such as Teddy Roosevelt and Ernest Hemmingway first started falling for the green plains of Africa.

But not all billionaire safari lodge owners are foreign. In South Africa’s thorn-draped Kalahari desert, De Beer’s diamond boss Nicky Oppenheimer owns Tswalu, a 32-person, desert-chic property modeled on a traditional Tswana village. A South African, Oppenheimer visits up to eight times a year and stays at Tarkuni, a private six-room thatched villa available for sole-use hire to guests. Apart from family photographs in the library, personal mementos are few and far between, and you’ll have to go to Kimberly to buy a DeBeers diamond, but fun and games include night telescopes and hot-air balloon rides.

The best way to get there? Charter a private jet from Johannesburg. Oppenheimer, of course, usually takes his own helicopter.

slidshow See our slideshow of 10 billionaire's safari lodges.

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