SITIKILA TENTED CAMP CONSTRUCTION PROGRESS IN LOWER ZAMBEZI NATIONAL PARK

Construction on Sitikila Tented Camp, a new safari property under development along the Lower Zambezi, continues to advance, with the latest progress update revealing significant milestones in the camp’s build, including the incorporation of a striking natural landmark into the design of its main communal area.

The camp is rising within the Rifa Concession, a 55,000-hectare wilderness hidden between the escarpment and the winding Zambezi River that remained closed to visitors for more than two decades. Its 32 kilometres of river frontage and Mana Pools-style floodplains were left largely undisturbed during that time, until anti-poaching and conservation efforts began in 2017, gradually allowing the land’s plains and big game populations to recover and flourish once again. Sitikila is one of only four camps that will ever be permitted into this protected wilderness, a restriction designed to preserve the area’s remoteness and ecological integrity even as it opens, carefully, to visitors.

The camp itself is being built as a semi-permanent, low-impact tented property set on raised decking overlooking Mazunga Pan, the largest natural inland pan within the Rifa Concession, located roughly eight kilometres from the Zambezi River itself. Developers describe the site as wild and wonderfully remote, offering sweeping views across the pan that were central to the camp’s positioning from the outset. Sitikila is designed with photographers and birders in mind, alongside travellers seeking what developers describe as a version of Africa that is disappearing elsewhere. Once complete, it will link seamlessly with existing camps at Tafika and Makombakomba in Sapi, forming a single, uninterrupted photographic safari corridor along one of the most spectacular stretches of the entire Zambezi River.

Construction began with a walk of the site to peg out the positions of six safari tents and the camp’s central area, translating a design concept into something visible on the ground for the first time. Each tent position was carefully selected to maximise views across the pan, ensuring guests would have unobstructed sightlines over the surrounding landscape from their individual accommodations.

For the central area, the site itself supplied its own design solution: a magnificent tamarind tree, around which the decking has now been built. This approach allows the tree’s sweeping branches to become part of the finished structure, preserving the natural character that drew the camp’s developers to the location in the first place, rather than clearing the site to make way for construction.

Raised structures were then put in place to support each deck, elevating the camp above ground level to provide both safety from wildlife moving through the area and an enhanced vantage point across the pan and surrounding bush.

The most recent phase of construction has since built on this foundation. Tent frameworks are now going up, with canvas-coloured paintwork applied to blend the structures with their eventual tenting material, offering the first real indication of how the finished guest tents will look. The main decking has also been extended further, now wrapping fully around the tamarind tree at the heart of the camp, while decking for the remaining three guest tents has been laid, bringing the camp incrementally closer to completion across its full accommodation footprint. Work has also begun behind the scenes on the camp’s back-of-house areas, the operational infrastructure that will support day-to-day running once the camp opens to guests.

The phased construction updates being shared publicly offer a rare, behind-the-scenes look at how a safari camp is built from the ground up in one of Zimbabwe’s most tightly protected wilderness areas. With the camp’s core structures steadily falling into place, developers describe each week as bringing Sitikila closer to opening its doors and sharing this remote corner of the Zambezi with future guests.