The word safari simply means ‘a journey’ in Swahili. Its root word is the Arabic word safar, which also means journey or travel. A nod to the centuries of travel and trade between Arabs and Swahili people on the East African Coast.
Over time, the term ‘safari‘ has come to take on a different meaning for Westerners and non-Swahili speakers around the world; an evolution shaped by colonisation and conquest.
Safari was first recorded in English usage in the late 1850s, and it was added to English dictionaries as a standard entry around 1890.
Today, in most English dictionaries, safari is defined as:
‘A trip to see or hunt wild animals, especially in east or southern Africa’
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary
So, how did a simple word meaning travel become so deeply associated with hunting?
Popularisation of the word ‘Safari‘
In 1909, just months after leaving the White House, former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt embarked on what would become one of the most famous safari expeditions of the 20th century. Funded partly by the Smithsonian Institution, he embarked on a trip across British East Africa and the Congo to collect wildlife specimens for American museums.
Over a year, Roosevelt’s team killed over 11,000 animals, including 512 big game animals such as elephants, lions, rhinos, and hippos. The trip was America’s grand display of imperial masculinity and dominance in the scramble for Africa.
Roosevelt was accompanied by around 250 porters, a large team of guides, taxidermists, and other experts. He landed in Mombasa, Kenya, on March 23, 1909, and over almost a year, visited Uganda, Sudan, and the eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The carcasses of the animals he hunted were shipped back to the U.S. to be stuffed, studied, or displayed, turning African wildlife into trophies for Western institutions.
Roosevelt’s trip was followed by popular photographs and magazine features of him and writings about his journey, which helped romanticise the idea of safari as a thrilling, elite African adventure. His journey transformed the word safari into a global brand synonymous with colonial adventure and animal conquest, sparking a wave of aristocratic and celebrity hunting trips.
Exoticisation of Safari
To support the booming safari industry, colonial governments began setting aside vast tracts of land as national parks. While today the parks remain with the goal to protect wildlife, it was at that time not for ecological reasons, but rather to preserve animal populations for hunting and tourism and keep the local communities out of the lands.
With the creation of these parks, local communities were evicted from ancestral lands, and traditional hunting and grazing rights were banned. African voices and stewardship were erased to make way for ‘pristine wilderness’ as a European fantasy of Africa without Africans.
In the early to mid-20th century, the word safari became deeply romanticised through popular literature and films, which shaped global perceptions of Africa as a land of wild adventure and exotic landscapes.
Karen Blixen showing off lionesses she hunted
One of the most influential was Karen Blixen’s memoir, Out of Africa (1937), which recounted her life as a colonial settler in Kenya. Her book was later adapted into the 1985 film of the same name starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford.
Another influential and famous figure was Ernest Hemingway, a famous novelist, journalist who wrote many books and articles that played a major role in romanticising and popularising African safaris. His masculine idealisation of safari life through his personal stories contributed to the exotification of Africa.
Ernest Hemingway next to a hunted leopard
These books, movies, photos and postcards produced in the West cemented the images into the popular understanding of safari as a luxurious hunting adventure. These stories, however, didn’t delve into the complex oppressive realities of the safari of that time in relation to the killing and displacement of indigenous peoples.
A Changing Safari Story
As African nations gained independence, hunting became increasingly restricted or banned. Full bans are relatively rare but exist in some countries like Kenya, while most other countries have regulated hunting with quotas and permits remains common as a way to fund conservation and local communities, including in Tanzania.
Even though the use of the word safari had already been hijacked, Africans began to reclaim control over how safari tourism operated. In Kenya and across the continent, new models of conservation emerged: community conservancies. These conservancies were increasingly owned and governed by local communities. The goals of wildlife conservation were expanded to include empowering people.
At this time, the meaning of safari to Westerners began to shift once again. No longer a word tied solely to rifles and conquest, safari began to mean wildlife viewing, photography, and cultural experiences. Tourists came not to shoot with cameras instead of guns, and went home with wildlife statues instead of murderous trophies.
Forever a Journey
Though the colonial repackaging of the word may have dominated international tourism for a century, today that narrative is being rewritten by local communities. And yet, through all of this transformation, for many Swahili speakers, the word safari never really changed in the first place.
In the streets of East Africa, safari is a word that has no historic baggage of death and conquest. A Swahili speaker who has interacted with a Westerner might quietly chuckle when they hear someone say, ‘I am travelling on safari’, amused by the unintended, humorous double meaning born from linguistic misunderstanding.
Instead, when one goes on a wildlife safari in Swahili, they would say naenda safari kuona wanyama wa pori, literally meaning ‘I am going for a trip to see wildlife’, or simply naenda kuona wanyama, meaning ‘I am going to see animals [wildlife]’.
It still means what it always did: a journey. Whether it’s travelling near or far, for pleasure or for business, to see family or going on a religious pilgrimage, safari retains its original meaning in East African homes, markets, and everyday conversations. Safari is not an imperialist gateway into Africa; it simply expresses personal freedom and agency to move from one place to another.
References
- Adams, W. M., & McShane, T. O. (1992). The myth of wild Africa: Conservation without illusion. University of California Press.
- Anderson, D., & Grove, R. (Eds.). (1988). Conservation in Africa: Peoples, policies and practice. Cambridge University Press.
- Chebet Tubey, W., Ndunge Kyalo, D., & Mulwa, A. (2020). Socio‑Cultural Conservation Strategies and Sustainability of Community‑Based Tourism Projects in Kenya: A Case of Maasai Mara Conservancies. Journal of Sustainable Development, 13(6), 50–65. https://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jsd/article/view/0/41408
- Jones, E. (2006). Colonial narratives and the romance of African safaris: Out of Africa and beyond. Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 12(3), 345–362. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790600925873
- Muchapondwa, E., & Stage, J. (2015). Institutional misalignments in African wildlife conservation and hunting. Environmental Research Letters, 10(10), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/10/10/105001
- Munro, P. (2020). Colonial wildlife conservation and national parks in Sub-Saharan Africa. In T. Spear (Ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.195
- Neumann, R. P. (1995). Ways of seeing Africa: Colonial recasting of African society and landscape in Serengeti National Park. Cultural Geographies, 2(2), 135–160. https://doi.org/10.1177/147447409500200201
- Roosevelt, T. (1910). African game trails: An account of the African wanderings of an American hunter-naturalist. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
- Wanjala, S. (2021). Parks and people: Expropriation of nature and conservation displacement in Kenya. Current Opinion in Anthropology, 40, 47–53. https://journals.lww.com/coas/fulltext/2021/19040/parks_and_people__expropriation_of_nature_and.5.aspx
- Western, D., Waithaka, J., & Kamanga, J. (2015). Community-based conservation in Kenya: Evolution, milestones and way forward. Ecology and Society, 20(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-07283-200152
