Planning luxury Africa safaris can feel overwhelming. Who can you trust? What’s real, and what’s just clever marketing? At Encompass Africa, we get it because Africa is all we do, and all we’ve ever done.
We’re an Australia-based Africa specialist with offices in Brisbane and Sydney, and a team with 85+ combined years of living, guiding, and designing journeys across the continent.
But we’re more than Africa safaris and travel specialists. We’re advocates. Every safari we design is built on a simple belief: that travel done right doesn’t just change the traveller, it protects the places and people you travel to.
Africa is truly extraordinary. Your luxury Africa safari should be too. And it should leave Africa better than you found it.
See how we travel Start your conversation
Hi, I’m Jono.
I grew up in South Africa. Safari isn’t something I discovered, it’s something I was raised inside. The sound of the bush at dawn, the weight of responsibility you feel in the presence of a wild animal, the quiet dignity of communities who have lived alongside nature for generations. These things shaped me before I had words for them.
In February 2003, I met my wife Danica while guiding her on safari. We’ve been building something together ever since, first a life, then in 2009, Encompass Africa.
The name was deliberate. To encompass Africa means to hold all of it: the wilderness and the wildlife, yes, but also the people, the cultures, the communities, the complexity. We’ve never believed you can separate the health of the land from the wellbeing of the people who live on it. A thriving ecosystem and a thriving community are the same thing, and responsible tourism is one of the most powerful tools we have to support both.
That’s not a philosophy we added later. It’s the reason we exist.
Today our team brings over 85+ years of combined Africa experience to every conversation we have. We return to the continent every year not just to stay current, but because we can’t stay away. We choose our partners carefully, by which I mean we choose the ones who share our values: fair employment, community ownership, conservation contribution, and environmental integrity. If an operator doesn’t meet that bar, we don’t send our clients to them.
What we promise you is simple. A journey that is exactly right for you: your pace, your passions, your definition of extraordinary. And a journey that is genuinely good for Africa. In our experience, those two things are never in conflict. The very best safaris are always the ones that encompass everything.
Reach out when you’re ready. Nothing beats a conversation, and we’d love to have one.
FOUNDER | ADVENTURER | MD
Africa is everything we do, the only continent we work in, the only story we tell. But our commitment runs deeper than expertise. Every operator we recommend, every camp we book, every dollar that flows through our work is chosen because it contributes to Africa’s wildlife, wilderness, and communities. We hold ourselves to that standard because we love this place too much to do otherwise.
We start with a blank page and your dreams, and we don’t stop until every detail is exactly right for you. No templates, no packages, no guesswork. Just a deeply personal conversation, decades of firsthand knowledge, and an itinerary built precisely for who you are and how you want to travel.
Africa is vast and complex, and navigating it well requires people you can genuinely trust. Our handpicked ground partners share our exacting standards for safety, care, and conservation. Your personal specialist is with you every step before, during, and after your journey.
Booking a significant safari requires confidence. Ours comes from 16 + years of delivering extraordinary journeys and the financial and travel safeguards that ensure your investment is secure, so you can focus entirely on the adventure ahead.
The wildlife that takes your breath away. The wilderness that makes you feel genuinely small. The guide who was born nearby and knows every bird call, every animal track, every story the land holds. The family the lodge employs. The farmer supplying the kitchen. The conservancy that exists because tourism made it economically viable to protect land instead of convert it.
None of these things exist in isolation. They are a living system, and when tourism is done right, it sustains that system rather than exploiting it. That’s the Africa we work to support, not as a side project, but as the reason we do this work.
Every safari we design contributes to that system through our partner selection, through Hearten Africa our giving program, and through our refusal to book operators who don’t share these values. When you travel with us, your journey encompasses all of it, the experience of a lifetime, and a genuine, lasting contribution to the continent that made it possible.
That’s what we mean when we say we encompass Africa.
See how we travelFrom the great migration across the Serengeti to gorilla families in the misty highlands of Rwanda. From tracking black rhino on foot in Zimbabwe to drifting silently through the Okavango’s channels in Botswana. From the ancient cultures of Ethiopia to the wild coastlines of Mozambique.
Each of these places is irreplaceable. Each is also under pressure from habitat loss, poaching, climate change, and the constant tension between development and preservation.
The single most powerful economic argument for protecting them is the value that well-managed, high-integrity tourism generates for the communities who live alongside them.
When you choose where to go, you’re casting a vote for the Africa you want to exist.
We’ll help you cast it well.
– Richard Mullin, traveller and adventurer
There is no experience quite like being on foot in the African bush at dawn, reading the ground with a guide who has spent a lifetime learning its language. Or sitting in silence on a canoe as a hippo surfaces in the distance. Or watching a mountain gorilla look back at you through the bamboo forest with an intelligence that is unmistakably familiar.
These moments don’t happen by accident.
They happen because the right guide was trained, the right conservancy was funded, and the right operator made decisions that put the integrity of the experience and the health of the ecosystem above short-term convenience.
We design experiences that are extraordinary for you, and that support the people and places that make them possible.
That’s not a compromise.
It’s the whole point.