At Honeyguide, we see ourselves as social entrepreneurs committed to developing sustainable enterprises within community protected areas of northern Tanzania. We wholeheartedly believe in the importance of local ownership in conservation, and so our work focuses on empowering people and communities to protect their land and natural resources. Together we are all Tanzanians dedicated to creating a Tanzania of tomorrow in which people and wildlife not only coexist, but live in a state of mutual benefit and interdependence.

Our Story

It’s impossible to tell the story of Honeyguide without telling of how Damian Bell and Ole Kirimbai became friends back in the early 1990s when they worked at a community-based tourism venture called Sokwe. Even then, while setting up camps in northern Serengeti, they experimented in community programs like hiring and training ex-poachers to be guards and working with farmers to sell quality crops to tourism camps.

After Sokwe merged with another company, Asilia Africa, Damian and Kirimbai decided to expand upon some of that community work they had started. With start-up funding from Asilia Africa, in 2007 the two formed Honeyguide, a non-profit promoting community conservation at a time when few such organizations existed in Tanzania. Nearly 30 years after becoming friends, the two serve as Honeyguide’s executive director and chairman and continue to keep the organization constantly growing and evolving.