Kafue National Park title graphic with a herd of elephants crossing golden grassland at sunset and a male lion resting in the foreground

Kafue National Park: Zambia’s Great Wilderness

Kafue is Zambia’s oldest and largest national park: 22,400 km² of river, woodland and floodplain in the west of the country, roughly the size of Wales. It is also one of the least-visited big parks in southern Africa. Most travellers fly straight to South Luangwa or the Lower Zambezi and never see it.

That is a pity, and also its charm. Kafue is not a park you “do” in two nights. It rewards people who are happy to drive, to look hard, and to accept that wildlife here is spread across a huge area rather than packed into a showcase valley. In return you get wild dog, cheetah, lion on the Busanga Plains, more antelope species than almost anywhere in Africa, and often no other vehicle in sight.

Below is the story of the park: how it came to exist, why it is so big, and why so much lives in it.

A short history of Kafue

Colonial authorities first protected Kafue as a game reserve in the early 1920s, and the governor then proclaimed it a national park in 1950. As a result, it is the oldest park in Zambia. However, its story also includes people moved off their land, a dam that split the park in two, decades of poaching and, finally, a genuine recovery.

The people who lived here first

Long before anyone drew park boundaries, this was the hunting country of the Nkoya people under Mwene Kabulwebulwe. In 1924, however, the colonial government of Northern Rhodesia moved them east into what is now Mumbwa District to make way for the game reserve. That history still matters today. For example, Nkoya leaders have argued for years that the communities around the park see too little benefit from tourism.

From game reserve to national park

The colonial government set up the Kafue Game Reserve in the early 1920s to stop the steady loss of wildlife. Then, in 1950, the governor proclaimed it a national park, and the conservationist Norman Carr played a key role in its early years. Today Carr is better known as the father of the walking safari in the Luangwa Valley, but Kafue was part of his story too. Oddly, the government only gazetted the park in law in 1972, more than twenty years after the proclamation.

The dam that split the park

In the 1970s Zambia built the Itezhi-Tezhi Dam on the Kafue River, just below the park, to generate hydropower. The new lake flooded the old north–south track through the park. As a result, for decades a drive from Chunga in the north to Ngoma in the south meant a long detour outside the park. The south, including the beautiful Nanzhila Plains, therefore became the forgotten half of Kafue. Fortunately, the newer spine road now links the two halves again.

The hard years

From the 1970s to the early 2000s, commercial poaching and the bushmeat trade hit Kafue hard, just as they hit most of Zambia’s parks. Poachers had killed the last black rhino by the 1980s, and many other species declined sharply. Even earlier, in the 1960s, the Kafue lechwe, a floodplain antelope found nowhere else, had already disappeared from the park.

Recovery and the return of the rhino

From 2018, Zambia’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW) and several conservation groups began to push poaching back. African Parks then joined in 2021 with a short support plan, and in July 2022 the government signed a 20-year agreement with African Parks to co-manage the park. Since then, the partners have brought around 400 Kafue lechwe back to the shores of Lake Itezhi-Tezhi. In addition, they moved wildebeest and zebra in from Liuwa Plain in 2025.

Next come the black rhino. The park team has fenced a protected zone of 150,000 hectares in the north of the park, between Mapunga Bush Camp and Mozhi Bush Camp. The first animals should arrive before the heavy rains of late 2026, and over time the plan is to bring in 40 to 60 rhino.

Meanwhile, operators who have worked Kafue for years say recent seasons have brought the best game viewing they remember. Visitor numbers are rising too, from about 16,000 in 2023 to almost 24,000 in 2024. Moreover, roughly half of those visitors are Zambians.

YearWhat happened
2025Wildebeest and zebra translocated from Liuwa Plain
202220-year co-management agreement with African Parks
2021African Parks support plan begins
1980sLast black rhino lost to poaching
1972Park formally gazetted
1970sItezhi-Tezhi Dam built, park road cut in two
1960sKafue lechwe disappear from the park
1950Proclaimed a national park
1924Nkoya people moved out for the game reserve
Early 1920sKafue Game Reserve created

Why is Kafue so large?

Kafue is big because, a hundred years ago, almost nobody wanted this land for anything else. Poor soils and the tsetse fly kept farmers and cattle away, so the colonial government could draw the boundaries wide around country it saw as empty.

At 22,400 km² the park is about the size of Wales, and it stretches across three provinces: North-Western, Central and Southern. You will often read that it is the second-largest national park in Africa, although some conservation sources rank it third. Either way, it sits among the giants of the continent.

Poor soil, few farms

Most of Kafue sits on pale, leached Kalahari sands, the same ancient sands that run all the way down to Livingstone. These sands drain fast and hold few nutrients. As a result, they grow miombo woodland well but make poor farmland. Only the clay soils of the northern floodplains and a few river valleys are more fertile.

The tsetse fly

Kafue has always had tsetse, and with it the risk of sleeping sickness in people and nagana in cattle. Early settlers learnt this the hard way. For example, missionaries founded a station at Nkala in 1893 but abandoned it in 1930 because of tsetse and sleeping sickness. Where cattle cannot survive, villages stay small and far apart. For conservation, therefore, the fly was one of the park’s best guardians. For you as a visitor, it simply means long sleeves and neutral colours in some woodland areas.

A whole river system

After the colonial government moved the Nkoya out in 1924, it could draw the boundaries around an entire river system: the Kafue and its main tributaries, the Lufupa, Lunga, Luansanza and Musa. In other words, the park protects whole catchments rather than a single valley, and that is what gives it its scale.

Even bigger than it looks

The park itself is only the core. Nine Game Management Areas surround it as buffer zones, where communities live and should benefit from wildlife. Together they form the Greater Kafue Ecosystem of about 66,000 km². In addition, Kafue belongs to the Kavango–Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), which spans Zambia, Angola, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

There is an honest caveat, however. Settlers and farmers now occupy about half of the GMA land, partly because families are moving north as droughts hit southern Zambia. The buffer is shrinking, which makes the protected core matter even more.

Why is Kafue so diverse?

Kafue holds 21 species of antelope, the richest antelope list of any national park in Africa. In addition, it has more than 150 mammal species and over 500 birds. The reason is simple: a park this size covers many different worlds, from papyrus swamp to dry teak forest, and each one has its own specialists.

GroupSpecies recorded
Birdsover 500
Mammals152 to 158
Reptilesabout 70
Fishabout 58
Amphibiansabout 36
Antelope (of the mammals)21

A rainfall gradient

The far north of Kafue gets more than 1,000 mm of rain a year, while the far south gets around 500 mm. In practice, that is the difference between a wet, green, swampy landscape and a dry, open one, all inside a single park. Consequently, species that need water and shade live in the north, while dry-country species reach the edge of their range in the south.

A mosaic of habitats

Within that gradient, Kafue also packs in an unusual range of landscapes:

  • Miombo woodland covers most of the park. This open, fire-adapted forest of Brachystegia and related trees opens here and there into small grassy dambos, and it is sable, roan and Lichtenstein’s hartebeest country.
  • Teak and mopane forests in the centre and south add a drier woodland type.
  • Riverine forest lines the Kafue and its tributaries. Leopard, bushbuck, Pel’s fishing owl and the African finfoot all live here.
  • The Busanga Plains in the far north-west are seasonal floodplains along the Lufupa River, dotted with date-palm and fig islands. Here big herds of red lechwe and puku graze alongside buffalo, and lions and cheetah follow them.
  • The Busanga Swamps beyond them hold papyrus wetland, one of the few places where you can realistically hope to see sitatunga.
  • The Nanzhila Plains in the far south mix open grassland and woodland with a rich variety of antelope. They are also the best place to look for the black-cheeked lovebird.
  • Lake Itezhi-Tezhi is man-made; nevertheless, it has created new floodplain on its shores, and that is where the Kafue lechwe now live again.
  • Termite mounds, some hundreds or even thousands of years old, carry their own evergreen trees such as jackalberry and candelabra euphorbia. In effect, they form little islands of forest in the grassland.

More antelope than anywhere else

These habitats explain the antelope. For instance, red lechwe and puku graze the wet plains, while sitatunga hide in the papyrus. Blue and yellow-backed duiker live in thick forest, and oribi and Sharpe’s grysbok use the grassland edges. Meanwhile, sable, roan and hartebeest work the miombo. Finally, impala, kudu, waterbuck, reedbuck, eland and wildebeest fill the gaps in between.

Predators and big game

Kafue has more than 200 lions, the largest cheetah population in Zambia, a healthy leopard population and a stronghold of African wild dog. Spotted hyena, serval, caracal and honey badger complete the picture. In addition, around 4,800 elephants roam the park, and they often move between areas rather than staying in one place. The Kafue River, for its part, holds at least 2,400 hippos and some of the largest crocodiles in southern Africa.

Birds

BirdLife International lists Kafue as an Important Bird Area. Highlights include Chaplin’s barbet, Zambia’s only endemic bird, and the wattled and grey crowned cranes that breed on the Busanga Plains. Look out also for Pel’s fishing owl, African skimmers on river sandbars and Böhm’s bee-eater.

Visiting Kafue: what to expect

The best time for Kafue is the dry season, June to October, because animals then gather near water and the roads are passable. However, you can only reach the Busanga Plains once the floods drop, so camps there open for the dry months only. Camps in central Kafue, on the other hand, stay open longer.

A few honest pointers from our side:

  • Plan for distances. Kafue is not compact. The north (Busanga, Lufupa), the central river area around the Great West Road, and the south (Itezhi-Tezhi, Nanzhila) feel like three different parks. Pick one or two areas rather than trying to see it all.
  • Game is patchy, then excellent. Long drives through miombo can be quiet. Then you reach a dambo, a river bend or the open plains and everything changes. That rhythm is part of Kafue.
  • The south is close to us. The Nanzhila Plains are the nearest real safari area to Livingstone and Victoria Falls, and still very few people go there.
  • Tsetse are part of the deal. Wear long, neutral-coloured clothing in woodland areas and avoid dark blue and black.
  • It’s quiet. Expect to have sightings to yourself. Kafue still sees only a fraction of the visitors of South Luangwa.

Our Kafue safaris

These Zamsato trips include Kafue, from short breaks out of Livingstone to longer tented journeys:

If you’d like Kafue in your trip, whether as a few days from Livingstone or as part of a longer Zambia safari, tell us what you have in mind on our Safari Your Style page and we’ll plan it with you.

Sources

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