Meet the Chobe Angels, Africa’s First All-Female Safari Guide Team

We’ve been inside Chobe National Park for just a few minutes before encountering a small herd of elephants. Our open-air safari vehicle rolls to a stop on the soft dirt road, bringing us face to face with a mother and her calf, just a few months old. After about six months, explains our guide, Bella, the elephant isn’t able to pass under its mother’s belly. The elephant encounter is the norm here inside the northern Botswana national park, known as the “Land of Giants” for its robust pachyderm population. Another norm? The female guide.

Bella is a member of the Chobe Angels, part of the Chobe Game Lodge and Africa’s first all-female safari guide team. Situated on the banks of the Chobe River, the luxury riverfront accommodation is the only permanent lodge inside the 4,500-square mile park. Since 2010, the lodge has been home to the groundbreaking all-female team that’s not only impacted the lives of its members, but fundamentally changed the narrative around a woman’s role in conservation and tourism in Africa.

Malebogo Mangwegape, who goes by Lebo, was among the first women to become a guide at Chobe Game Lodge. Growing up in Ramotswa, a small farming village where her family kept livestock like cattle and goats and cultivated sorghum and maize, Mangwegape wasn’t familiar with the job of a safari guide. She learned about the role when she came across an advertisement in a daily paper for a tour guide program at the Botswana Wildlife Training Institute. The government-funded educational facility specializes in wildlife management and tourism. In 2006, out of thousands of applicants, Mangwegape was accepted into the program that was, until that point, mostly made up of men.

“This used to be taken as the men’s job,” she recalls. “There were 15 ladies and 15 guys in our class. A big competition there.” All the women passed the rigorous training program, and Mangwegape landed a job at Chobe Game Lodge, where she joined the team that included Florence Kagiso, who would eventually go on to be the lodge’s head guide. In 2004, Chobe was “the first lodge to introduce female guides to start working,” notes Mangwegape. “Because most of the ladies, they can end up doing the office work.”

Instead of office work, the group of 19 women fans out around the national park daily, driving, educating, and safeguarding lodge guests from around the world.

Mangwegape, dressed in crisp green khakis with a red, elephant print scarf tied around her neck, is acutely attuned to the surrounding wildlife. She gracefully navigates narrow dirt roads little more than the width of the truck, weaving around spindly branches while stopping to examine old leopard tracks, point out a tiny dung beetle, or make way for a flock of helmeted guinea fowl, affectionately known as Chobe chickens, that cross our path.

One moment we were surrounded by elephants gently flapping their massive ears, trunks snapping up grasses and pungent wild basil. “This is Chobe for you,” she tells my fellow guests and me. “You’ll never be close to an elephant like this elsewhere.”

Unflappable and empathetic, Mangwegape observes the herd closely, and when one juvenile gets a little too bold, stepping close to our truck, the guide starts the engine so the sound deters him instantly. “Being in the bush, you listen, you smell,” she says. “Animals clue you in to what’s happening.”

The all-female guide team didn’t happen by accident. The driving force behind the Chobe Angels initiative was Johan Bruwer, the lodge’s general manager. When Bruwer took the role in 2004, the lodge employed just one female guide. Noting guests’ overwhelmingly positive reactions to her expertise and approach, the manager sought to hire more women—and was surprised to encounter stark cultural resistance and widespread skepticism.

“To my horror, there were barely five female guides in the entire country,” Bruwer says. The impression was that “women don’t do guiding in Botswana,” he says. “So, we set about to change that old perception.”

At the time, one reason women weren’t entering into guide training programs: there weren’t many paths to a job in the field. “Operators felt that they didn’t want to take on females because they can’t physically handle vehicles and the strenuous work that you do out in the field,” Bruwer recalls. “But it’s about technique, and it’s about just using your common sense.”

The manager launched a grassroots recruitment campaign, leveraging local media and asking the Botswana Wildlife Training Institute to send the lodge its female trainee graduates. By 2010, the Chobe Game Lodge had transitioned to an all-woman guide team. But creating opportunities was only half the battle—sustaining the program required a cultural shift. Bruwer implemented policies, including equal pay and comprehensive maternity leave, fostering an environment where the women could thrive.

Equally integral to the program’s success was mentorship. Kagiso, the lodge’s pioneering female guide, played a crucial role in leading and encouraging Mangwegape and others. “She kept on encouraging us, [saying] ‘Ladies, as I can do it, you can also do it.’” Mangwegape remembers.

The impact of the Chobe Angels extends far beyond representation. The women are exceptional guides, with Bruwer calling the team “better communicators.” Their approach has also yielded unexpected benefits for the business itself.

“The wear on the equipment is much less, and maintenance costs have dropped dramatically,” he says. “The male counterparts would venture off road more, and put the vehicles through a much harsher treatment than the female counterparts.” Mangwegape agrees. “We drive with caution,” she says. “We take [the trucks] as our babies.”

The Chobe Angels’ influence has resonated beyond Botswana, inspiring similar programs at lodges in Kenya and Zambia. And the lodge has become a vital incubator. Of the approximately 100 female guides now working across Botswana, more than half began their careers with the Chobe Angels.

“We’re very excited to see the female guide movement getting traction through the entire industry,” Bruwer says. “It makes the industry more widely accessible to women.”

Today, Mangwegape and her colleagues regularly field inquiries from women across Botswana interested in guiding careers, and they offer the same encouragement Florence Kagiso once gave her. The cycle continues, but the foundation remains the same simple truth the guide discovered years ago: “Once I take my backpack, go into my vehicle, I smile,” Mangwegape says. “Everything is just at peace.”