Royal African Response to COVID-19

The Royal African Response to COVID-19 has been about looking after our Royal African Family and doing what we can for some of the most vulnerable members in our communities on the continent.

Our first priority was, and still is, continuing to employ and take care of our staff and mobile camp crews. Once we had systems in place to ensure their continued financial support we started the Tippy Tap project with them. A total of 755 Tippy Tap hand washing stations have been built by our crew members and community members we know in their homes, all over Kenya, Botswana, and Tanzania. As we have been made aware, thorough hand washing is the most effective way individuals can stop the spread of the virus, and our teams and their families have had a lot of fun with this project, creating their variations on the design we circulated. In addition to this, in Tanzania 300 face masks and 200 mosquito nets have been distributed to our crew members and their extended families who didn’t have them to help them keep safe and well.

During the lockdowns, a vast amount of people in our communities were unable to work and were no longer able to buy food to feed themselves or their families. Using our Royal African Foundation, here are some of the ways we helped to tackle this immediate short term need for food relief during the lockdowns.

In Nairobi, we joined the Team Pankaj effort. Team Pankaj made and distributed food parcels to over 100,000 families, 102 orphanages and 1,000 child-headed homes in Nairobi’s poorest slums. These parcels contained enough food to last a family for at least two weeks as well as face masks and sanitation materials. They also made cash transfers for food to 130,000 of the neediest people in Nairobi’s slums. This local initiative was set up by a fellow safari operator Pankaj Shah.

In the rural outskirts of the Masaai Mara, local markets were prohibited from taking place, so we partnered with other organizations like Forest Guardians to make and distribute grow bags so that local community members could grow their fruit and vegetables at home. Now, 200 households are now growing their own vegetables using these grow bags. Additionally, we helped to distribute 1,000 government food aid parcels to the neediest families in the Olderkesi group ranch on the south-eastern border of the Mara.

In Maun, with schools closed, vulnerable children were not able to attend schools like Shelter Botswana preschool where they usually receive meals that are a lifeline for them. With the help of a very generous friend and guest, we distributed food parcels to 174 children and their families or caretakers who did not receive the limited government food aid in Maun. We continued to supply this food relief until the schools reopened in August.

Continuing to support our crews in Tanzania, Kenya, and Botswana is perhaps the most effective food relief effort we have done, for it helps them to continue to contribute to their local economies. This continues to be Royal African’s priority and our foundation will continue to invest in projects that benefit communities and conservation in the areas we visit together on safari. Stay tuned for updates about these projects in our next newsletters!

For those who haven’t seen it already, here is the video of the Tippy Tap Project!