OUR STORY
A Durban childhood under apartheid. A paediatrics ward built for crossfire victims. A cruise-ship deck at the edge of the world. This is how Dr. Prinetha Moodley, a children's doctor from KwaZulu-Natal, ended up building Africa's home for Black-owned safaris.
You can come to Africa and see wild animals with anybody. But with Sustainable Safaris Africa, you get to see the animals — and create real, quantifiable change in the lives of marginalised people.
DURBAN, KWAZULU-NATAL — THE 1980s
I was born in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, in the 1980s — a tumultuous time for South Africa. Apartheid was being challenged both at home and abroad, Nelson Mandela was still in prison, senior ANC leaders were in exile, and internal violence was rampant. Almost everyone was predicting a civil war between White, Zulu and Xhosa South Africans.
My parents carried on regardless, going to work every day to put food on the table. My father jogged ten kilometres to the paint factory where he worked, and back again, every single day. My mother ran a small tailoring and fabric wholesale business from home.
PRIMARY SCHOOL TO MEDICAL SCHOOL
I attended a racially segregated primary school. As South African Indians, our schools received slightly more funding than Black schools under apartheid law — but nothing close to what White schools had. Teachers were often absent, on strike, or simply not equipped to teach us properly.
I did well at school, in part because of the privilege my race afforded me within that broken system. But getting into medical school — my ambition since I was a child — was still an uphill climb. I had to build out my CV with volunteer work, which introduced me to vulnerable and segregated communities from an early age. I was accepted, and graduated around the time South Africa's democracy began in earnest.
HOSPITALS IN KWAZULU-NATAL, THEN A CRUISE SHIP
I started working in hospitals across KwaZulu-Natal, both rural and urban. To pay back the cost of my training, I then worked as a doctor aboard cruise ships — it was here that I got my first real understanding of the global tourism industry. My family had never had the money to leave our own province, let alone the country.
I had never left South Africa before. I remember what it felt like: female, with limited world experience, but curious and craving adventure. I felt vulnerable and brave in the same breath — wanting to assert an independence I'd worked so hard for, while trying to stay safe and responsible in the face of the unknown. On those ships, I saw first-hand the extravagance, the waste, and the lack of responsibility toward local people that the cruise industry stood for in those days.
RURAL SOUTH AFRICA TO RED CROSS, CAPE TOWN
Back in South Africa, I spent years with the most marginalised people in the country: rural Black children. I specialised in paediatrics because of one fact that shocked me into action — one in thirteen children in Sub-Saharan Africa do not live to see their fifth birthday. I knew that was where I needed to be.
I deliberately sought out the most remote and difficult postings, and stayed in them for years. Eventually I won a specialist training role at South Africa's premier children's hospital, Red Cross War Memorial in Cape Town. From there, I worked in one of the most gang-infested parts of the city — an ER that needed armed security at the door to stop rival gang violence from following patients inside.
That is how my focus narrowed to the critically ill child and paediatric emergency medicine: too many of the children I treated were caught in crossfire, neglected, or malnourished. I'm now one of only six specialists in South Africa in this sub-speciality, and part of the team building it into a discipline in its own right.
SOUTH SUDAN · KENYA · TANZANIA
My real passion is teaching, and building systems that can outlast the people who build them. I believe in equipping communities to name their own challenges, find their own solutions, and supporting them to get there.
That belief took me across the continent — South Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania — teaching and helping build systems to recognise and treat critically ill children. And everywhere I travelled, I saw the same thing that had shocked me on the cruise ships: an enormous, almost total disconnect between the tourist experience and the reality of the people living alongside it.
MY FORTIES
I met my husband in my early forties. I was intrigued by his work in sustainability and ethics within the travel industry. The more we talked, the clearer a gap became: between the safari experiences that women like me were capable of building, and what the global travel industry actually promoted.
Almost without exception, safari experiences were owned and run by White or foreign companies with little regard for what local people were paid. Most of what visitors spend on safaris and wilderness experiences in Africa was ending up nowhere near the hands of women like me.
THE BIRTH OF SSA
So — with a little help from my husband, I'll admit — I set up Sustainable Safaris Africa.
We only list Black-owned, and preferably Black female-owned, safari experiences from across Africa. We don't charge our suppliers any commission or listing fee — many couldn't afford it. We list them for free, and simply ask that, on an honesty basis, they give us 10% of any sale we send their way, so we can keep the site running and growing.
For full disclosure: I own SSA outright, but I draw no salary from it. Every rand it makes goes back into developing our suppliers, and into the education of Black girls and women.
WHY I DO THIS
My long-term goal is to reach the girls, women and mothers I meet so often in my medical practice — women who want to improve their circumstances and provide for their families, but lack the skills or opportunity to do it.
I want you to be part of the experiences I've had on safari with our suppliers — many of them genuinely life-changing. You can come to Africa and see wild animals with anybody. But with Sustainable Safaris Africa, you get to see the animals and create real, quantifiable change in the lives of marginalised people.
THE MODEL, IN NUMBERS
HOW SUSTAINABLE SAFARIS AFRICA WORKS
No salary for our founder. No commission for us to profit from your trip. Just a simple, trust-based way to get more of every safari dollar back into Black hands.
Black-owned and Black female-owned operators are listed at no cost — no commission, no listing fee, ever.
If a booking comes through SSA, suppliers give back just 10% — on an honesty basis, only after they've been paid.
Every cent funds supplier development and the education of Black girls and women. Dr. Moodley draws no salary from SSA.
We also offer all-female packages, run entirely by female suppliers — safer and more comfortable for women who've worked hard all their lives and simply want to feel looked after, for once. It's one more way we're closing the gap between who takes safaris in Africa, and who actually gets to run them.
My long-term goal is to reach the girls, women and mothers I meet so often in my medical practice — women who want to improve their circumstances and provide for their families, but lack the skills or opportunity to do it. Every booking through SSA is one small step toward that.
