Rumanyika-Karagwe
National Park · TANAPA
A small Kagera park with a nineteenth-century kingdom behind its name.
- Area
- 247 km²
- Established
- 2019
- Region
- Kagera Region
- Best time
- June–October
Wildlife
- Buffalo
- Roan
- Sitatunga
- Bushbuck
- Waterbirds
Rumanyika-Karagwe covers 247 square kilometres in Kagera, upgraded from game reserve to national park in 2019. The name carries history: Karagwe was a substantial kingdom in the nineteenth century, and its ruler Rumanyika hosted Speke and Grant in 1861 during their search for the source of the Nile — their accounts are among the earliest European descriptions of the interior.
The park is hilly, green country with wooded valleys and wetland, holding buffalo, roan, sitatunga and a good range of birds. It is small by Tanzanian standards and barely visited.
It belongs on a list of Tanzania's national parks, and on a longer route through the Lake Zone. It is not a standalone safari destination today.
The Karagwe kingdom
Rumanyika received Speke and Grant here in 1861.
Hilly Kagera country
Green, folded landscape quite unlike the savanna parks.
Sitatunga and roan
Present in the wetland and woodland sections.
Very few visitors
Among the least-visited parks in the country.
By road from Bukoba in Kagera Region.
Driving in is not practical. Camps here run their own vehicles, and we arrange the flight and the game drives instead of a hire.