Nyerere, Tanzania’s biggest National Park enters into Top 50 Best African Wildlife Safari Destinations

Written By Marc Nkwame

Nyerere, which is the newest and biggest National Park in both Tanzania and East Africa, has debuted in the 2024 Top 50 Best Safari Parks on the African Continent.

Established in 2019, Nyerere is the newest National Park and essentially the latest entry out of the analysed 2,384 park reviews on the SafariBookings.com website, which included 1,239 contributions by safari travellers from 74 countries, as well as 1,145 reviews written by international team of safari experts.

In total 196 parks from 15 countries, consisting of Botswana, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, were included in the study.

Nyerere took the 27^th Position out of the 50 leading destinations on the continent.

Serengeti, another Tanzanian National Park, once more took the first position, winning the title for the fifth time in a row.

Other winning entries from Tanzania include Ruaha, Katavi, Tarangire, Arusha, Lake Manyara and Mikumi National Parks as well as the Ngorongoro Crater, totalling eight, with Nyerere being the newest of them all.

But Nyerere is also a premium destination, graded in Category One which is the same class as Serengeti National Park famed for its wildebeests migration.

Measuring 30,893 square kilometers, Nyerere is essentially the biggest National Park in East Africa. In fact, the park is bigger than Belgium, the European country which covers 30,355 square kilometers and Lesotho (30,528).

Nyerere National Park was established in November 2019 after being annexed from part of the Selous Game Reserve which still borders the conservancy.

The Park started out with just 151 visitors but at the moment Nyerere attracts an average of 60,000 tourists per year generating around 11 billion/- in revenues and counting.

Many of the tourists visiting Nyerere at the moment are mostly day trippers who usually land in the morning from Zanzibar, undertake game drives in the Park before flying out again back to isles in the evenings.

The Park management is now working to ensure that these visitors spend between one and two nights, if not more for improved experience and this can only be possible once Nyerere NP gets enough beds to accommodate them.

Already big players in the hotel industry such as Serena, Asilia and Nomads have invested in Nyerere National Park and their properties are usually booked all around the year.

Located some 160 Kilometers from Morogoro Municipality, Nyerere National Park is however less than 3 hours’ drive from Dar-es-salaam City using the Kisarawe route.

The Park is accessible through all modes of transport, including by air, road and rail, that is the Tanzania-Zambia Railway (TAZARA), while touring the park can also be undertaken by air, road or even water, on a number of rivers and lakes dotting the landscape.