Discover Akagera National Park

Akagera National Park is located in the North East of Rwanda along the border with Tanzania. Although, founded in 1934, much of the park was re-allocated as farms and in 1997 the park was reduced in size from more than 2,700 sq km (nearly 10% of the surface area of Rwanda) to its current extent of 1,122 sq km. Since 2010, a joint venture with African Parks has seen Akagera return to its former glories.

It is named after the Akagera River that flows along its eastern boundary and feeds into a labyrinth of 10 lakes of which the largest is Lake Ihema and the first from bottom up(south to North). The forest fringed lakes, papyrus swamps, savannah plains and rolling highlands combine to make Akagera amongst the most scenic of reserves anywhere in Africa. It has exceptional levels of biodiversity and forms the largest protected wetland in central Africa.

Akagera combines well with Nyungwe and the Volcanoes NP to offer a great safari element as it is home to many large plains game species as well as species restricted to the papyrus swamps such as the Sitatunga and the sought-after Shoebill Stork. Notable plains game include lions, savannah elephants, buffaloes, rhinoceros, zebra, waterbuck, roan, impala, eland, waterbuck and topi antelopes among others such as warthog, maasai giraffe etc. Of the primates, olive baboons, vervets and blue monkey can be seen during the day, with bushbabies, serval cats, spotted hyena, leopard that often can be seen in night drives.

Lions were re-introduced in 2015 after last seen of this carnivores in 2005 and assumed to be extincted in this reserve as the introduction of black and white rhinoceros since 2017 . This has restored Akagera as a home of ‘Big 5’ status. Due to its wide variety of habitats, Akagera is an important ornithological site with nearly 500 bird species. The rare and elusive shoebill stork shares the papyrus with other rarities such as the exquisite papyrus gonolek and countless other water birds that inhabit the wetlands in large numbers, so activities in this park are day game drive, night game drive,boat ride experience and birdwatching.