Borana Conservancy Sets Ten Year Roadmap For Regenerative Safari Tourism: What You Need To Know

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On Kenya’s Laikipia Plateau, Borana Conservancy has set out an unusually candid ten‑year strategy that asks a hard question: what has to change for African safari tourism to survive and genuinely support conservation. The document, which looks out to 2036, argues that climate risk, demographic pressure and shifting global capital flows are converging in ways that will test even the best‑run wildlife destinations.

Managing Director Michael Dyer and Non‑Executive Chairman Giles Davies frame the plan as a resilience blueprint, not a victory lap. For them, the safari of the future rests on three big shifts: conservation strengthened by mostly invisible technology, large connected landscapes where wildlife can move freely, and a serious, measurable response to Africa’s youth employment challenge. In other words, scenery and wildlife alone will no longer be enough.

Borana As A Living Laboratory For Regenerative Travel

Borana is not sketching this vision from scratch. Over more than three decades, the conservancy has been refining a conservation‑tourism model that links biodiversity protection with community wellbeing and carefully designed hospitality. Its track record across northern Kenya is significant: hundreds of thousands of litres of water supplied to neighbouring villages during shortages; support that has helped build the combined Lewa–Borana Landscape black rhino population back up to roughly 200 individuals; and school feeding initiatives that deliver daily meals to thousands of children.

In 2024 alone, Borana channelled well over a million dollars directly into conservation, alongside running a Breakfast Club that now reaches more than 7,500 students in 22 primary schools and multiple early childhood centres. Those numbers underline what is already working. Yet Dyer insists these are foundations, not endpoints. With rainfall patterns changing, populations rising and tourism demand becoming less predictable, he argues that “planning for volatility” is now the only responsible way to manage a conservation landscape.

Four Pillars And A 25‑Risk Radar

The new ten‑year framework rests on four main pillars: conservation impact; social and economic impact; funding‑landscape impact; and governance and ethical impact. Each pillar is backed by concrete objectives, from maintaining intact habitats and strengthening wildlife corridors, to expanding local livelihoods and deepening community benefit‑sharing. Governance receives unusual prominence, with an emphasis on transparent decision‑making, accountable leadership and ethical standards that can withstand external scrutiny.

Complementing these pillars is an annual risk‑mapping exercise that tracks more than 25 long‑term dynamics. These range from climate and water security to AI, youth unemployment, regional security and global tourism trends. Rather than pretending to predict the future, Borana’s board uses this “radar” to stress‑test plans, adjust priorities and avoid over‑reliance on any single income stream, market or technology.

The Hidden Weakness: Broken Financial Circularity

Climate change is often treated as the defining threat to safari tourism, but Borana’s leaders argue that the industry’s financial structure may be just as dangerous. Davies describes the problem as “weak financial circularity”: too little of the money generated by safaris is recycled back into the ecosystems and communities that make those safaris possible. When lodges and tour operations capture value without systematically funding conservation, landscapes become dependent on philanthropy and vulnerable to market shocks.

Borana Lodge is presented as a counter‑example. Around a quarter of the lodge’s published nightly rate is earmarked explicitly for conservation, and despite having only eight cottages, this allocation generates more than 700,000 USD a year for nature protection across the landscape. If a similar percentage of revenue were ring‑fenced across Kenya’s tourism sector, Davies estimates that roughly 200 million USD of additional annual conservation finance could be unlocked. With African tourism forecast to grow by double digits to 2030, failing to fix circularity risks driving overcrowding and ecological strain without strengthening the natural capital on which the entire industry depends.

Technology That Protects Nature, Not Replaces It

Borana’s strategy embraces technology, but on very specific terms. The conservancy already uses AI‑supported surveillance, satellite imagery and remote sensing to monitor wildlife and detect threats across the Lewa–Borana landscape. Sophisticated digital platforms help coordinate ranger patrols, track potential incursions and support rapid response, making anti‑poaching operations more effective and cost‑efficient.

At lodge level, investments in renewable energy, improved water infrastructure and low‑impact building help reduce the environmental footprint while improving reliability in an increasingly unpredictable climate. Yet Dyer and Davies are equally clear about what they don’t want: hyper‑immersive guest technologies that disrupt the sense of being in a wild place. In their view, the core safari experience is about direct, unmediated connection with nature; technology’s role is to quietly safeguard that experience, not distract from it.

Youth Employment And Local Access As A Social Imperative

One of the most powerful arguments in Borana’s plan is social rather than environmental. For most of the last century, high‑end safaris have been priced far beyond the reach of ordinary African citizens. At the same time, many conservation areas sit within or alongside communities facing stubbornly high youth unemployment and limited economic options. Dyer warns that even the best ecological models will become fragile if they are surrounded by frustrated, excluded young populations.

To avoid that outcome, the strategy emphasises skills development, training pathways and local enterprise creation that go beyond classic lodge jobs. This includes supporting small businesses in agriculture, crafts, transport, guiding, technology and services that are linked to, but not wholly dependent on, tourism. The long‑term goal is for neighbouring communities to feel genuine ownership of the landscape, and to see a clear link between its health and their own prospects.

Global Capital: Threat Or Lifeline For Conservation Landscapes

African nature tourism already generates tens of billions of dollars a year, with some forecasts suggesting that the sector’s value could triple by 2030. Borana’s leadership argues that the critical question is not just how much capital flows into Africa, but what kind of capital it is. Today, a large share still funds infrastructure and land‑use change that can erode habitats faster than sustainability safeguards are established.

Borana advocates for “internalising philanthropy”, meaning that a larger slice of tourism revenue, and indeed impact‑minded investment, must be directed into conservation and community funds as a non‑negotiable cost of doing business. Its own integrated livestock‑wildlife model, where cattle and wildlife share the same landscape under carefully managed grazing systems, is offered as proof that agricultural production and biodiversity protection do not have to be in conflict. For East Africa as a whole, such hybrid land uses may be essential as population and land‑use pressures intensify.

What Success Could Look Like By 2036

The final pages of Borana’s ten‑year strategy sketch a vision of what “success” might mean a decade from now. It is not simply a picture of full lodges and healthy balance sheets, nor a narrow focus on wildlife numbers. Instead, success would mean a landscape where wildlife moves freely across connected conservation areas, buffering the system against climate shocks and localised pressures.

It would also mean surrounding communities with rising incomes and stronger services, durable financial models that automatically channel tourism revenue into nature, and a generation of young people who see conservation as an attractive, viable career path. In that scenario, safari tourism would function as a genuinely regenerative system, one that consistently leaves places and people better than it found them, and that could serve as a global reference point for how high‑end travel can fund the protection of the natural world.