Africa Direct is a safari operator, and it publishes no telephone number and no email address. Its Get in Touch page is a form and nothing else. That is a deliberate choice rather than an omission, and knowing it saves you hunting for a number that does not exist.
How to reach Africa Direct
- The Get in Touch form at africadirect.co.za, which is the only published route
- The form asks how you would prefer to be contacted: a face-to-face online call, a WhatsApp voice or video call, or email
- It takes your name, telephone number, email and an optional message
The company says it recommends a face-to-face online call so that it can understand what you want before quoting. For a tailor-made safari that is reasonable: the itinerary is built around you, so there is nothing to quote from a price list.
What to put in the form
The more of this you give, the more useful the first call is. Approximate dates and how many nights. How many travellers, their ages, and whether children are coming, because many camps have minimum-age rules. Which countries interest you. Whether you want a private guide or to join scheduled activities. And a budget range, which people leave out and should not: safari pricing spans an enormous range and a quote built on the wrong assumption wastes everybody time.
Who they are
Africa Direct describes itself as an intimate family of safari specialists with over 90 years of collective experience, and it names its team publicly on its own site. It covers Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, Madagascar, the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, and carries a conservation section.
Checks worth making before you pay a deposit
This is a general point about booking any safari, and it matters more than the brochure. A tailor-made multi-country trip involves large deposits paid a long time in advance to an operator holding your money.
- Ask whether the operator is bonded or holds client funds in a trust account, and get the answer in writing
- Pay by a method that gives you recourse, and never into an account given to you in an email that changes the details you were originally sent
- Get the itinerary, inclusions, exclusions and the cancellation terms in one document before the deposit, not after
- Confirm which airlines and camps are actually booked, with reference numbers, rather than pencilled
The changed-banking-details email is the specific fraud to guard against here, because a safari deposit is a large single payment to a company you have never visited. Confirm any account details by telephone on a number you already had, not on one in the email.
Practical planning notes
Several of the countries Africa Direct covers have entry requirements that catch travellers out: yellow fever certificates for some routings, and unabridged birth certificates for children travelling to or through South Africa in certain circumstances. Ask the operator to confirm the requirements for your exact routing, and check them independently with the relevant high commission or embassy as well.