How can I become a wildlife tour guide in Africa ?
Question by Crimson (silly mid off): How can I become a wildlife tour guide in Africa ?
I am from Pakistan, and I graduated in Economics… but I want to work in tourism in Africa…. I don’t know how to start, any suggestions ?
Best answer:
Answer by cheri
You would need a thorough knowledge, of the country, it’s people, traditions and wildlife … tourist expect the guide to know all the facts, maybe you can get involved in the financial side of tourism for a start
Add your own answer in the comments!
Your first major problem is getting to live in any particular country in the first place. Without some qualification that helps you in this line of work, it is going to be very hard to get into any specific African country.
From there you would of course need to find out what the regulations in that specific country is for guiding there. Each country is different, ranging from no requirements through to some rather tough requirements (such as in Botswana).
The next thing is to decide exactly what kind of guiding you want to do. Do you want to work at a lodge and just do game drives for that lodge, or do you want to do mobile safaris where you drive around a country visiting different lodges or do you want to do camping tours (where you will also need to know how to cook and so on.) What level of the market are you interested in – do you like to work with big groups, like bus tours where you deal with 30 odd people, or do you prefer to work with private trips where you only have one or two couples.
Doing some tour guide training course, specific to what you hope to do, will help a lot, but it is not everything. Most likely you will need to have a current first aid certificate as well. And most of your field knowledge you are going to need to teach yourself. Start with a good field guide to African Mammals (Kingdom Field Guide to African Mammals if you can afford it) and birds (get a regional one, not one of the ones for the whole of Africa. Sasols in Southern Africa, perhaps Stevenson and Fanshawe in East Africa).
When you are becoming a guide, keep in mind that nobody wants a bunch of facts, people want to hear the story. You need to know the facts, but don’t just sound like an encyclopedia on drive, tell them what is going on. If you get that right, you’ll become a valuable guide.
Your personal presentation is important – both for your potential employer and for your guests on safari.