In Conversation with David Guthrie from A Tent with a View: Part II

The team had always done a great deal around conservation and community – doctors on safari, dentists in the community – and, in 2015, David even ‘put the company on the line to take on the Wildlife Division,’ who were covering up the industrial levels of poaching that were taking place. ‘It was sketchy stuff,’ he says, ‘but it ended with a massive conference in Dar es Salaam where the good guys in government agreed to stick millions into anti-poaching.’ That had never been done before, but it was in an SDG-led world that A Tent With a View really began to find its purpose.

‘We came home to the UK in 2019 and were frankly pretty distraught at the lack of conservation and funding here,’ David tells me, ‘so we launched an initiative that rewarded community heroes who were doing conservation.’ People like teachers, students and volunteers, the unsung heroes who we all know but are rarely recognised. David and his wife, Tara, had everything in place for their first event after months of planning and fundraising, only for the scheme to be derailed by the pandemic. ‘It was supposed to happen 6 days after we locked down, so it obviously didn’t go ahead.’ Despite this rather significant setback, the project did produce one key legacy: it got David and his team into the SDGs.

The thing is with running a high-end safari company is that big part of your remit is taking some of the wealthiest people in the world to some of the poorest places. David realised that, and he realised that he could tap into it. ‘That’s why, originally, we created SDG centres in each of our camps, with the idea to educate clients about what the goals are and what they do.’ That’s why, if you travel to one of A Tent With a View’s camps, you’ll see staff there sporting merch with SDG messages. Imagine a Che Guevara fist raised to the sky with the message Kindness is gangster for SDG 16: Peace and Justice & Strong Institutions. It’s an innovative take on how to get people interested and engaged in the goals – and it’s working. ‘People stop the team the whole time, they ask them what their message is and what’s being done to get us there.’

If the merch is a more light-touch approach, then A Tent With a View’s other SDG projects are far from. Let’s start with the Saadani Lion and Turtle Projects (SDGs 14 & 15: Life Under Water and Life On Land). David and the team have had a camp in the park for nigh-on 30 years now, a unique place where lions roam within a few hundred yards of where turtles nest. The turtle project at Saadani has been running for two decades now and, in 2024, the lion project was added. There’s a dedicated research centre at the Simply Saadani Camp, from which David and the team can monitor the behaviour of two of our most-loved – and most-threatened – species.

A couple of dozen miles out to sea from Saadani is the place where A Tent With a View began life: Zanzibar. It’s on this idyllic island that the team is running the second arm of its on the ground projects, the Zanzibari Sustainability Champions. I would list the different goals that this wonderful project is addressing, but there are too many. You’ll have to take my word for it that, in total, the initiative encompasses 9 of the SDGs, from Diet all the way through to Climate Change.

‘The project takes young children from the poorest of backgrounds who did well despite the worst educational circumstances,’ David tells me, ‘and we put them in a classroom, train them for private school exams, and help them to take a step in that direction.’ Last year, 11 out of the 16 champions passed the exam, a remarkable feat given that an E grade is considered good in the schools where they’ve come from.

Alongside the traditional education that they receive, they’re coached in the SDGs, learning about what they are – and how to tackle them. ‘Every Friday, they have a day purely dedicated to conservation, they’ve learned a play – in English, which they didn’t have before – about the SDGs, they’ve built a forest in the north that was storm-affected, they’re attending courses on ocean plastics, they’re making a video that they’ll present to government, they’re becoming superstars.’ And all of this from children who, previously, had some of the most limited life prospects possible. David and the team are developing the next generation of ‘little icons’, people who will lead their communities and place the SDGs at the centre of everything they do.

This little part of David’s universe is undoubtedly being changed. But he’s not done – far from it. On Lake Victoria, A Tent With a View’s sights have focussed on another area: netball. ‘Tanzania are bottom in the world rankings,’ David tells me, ‘whereas Uganda, a neighbour, are in the top 10. There is zero reason why we shouldn’t be there too.’ So, David being David, he’s decided to fix that. A Tent With a View have built an entire sports academy on the lake, a facility that will take in 120 girls, educate them and train them to be the best in the netball business. ‘I’m convinced, absolutely convinced, that they’ll get into the top 10.’ To help them do that, David’s recruited one of the finest coaches from the UK (who shall remain nameless, given that he or she is still contracted to coach at the highest level here), who visited the site last year and was so affected by the projected that he or she decided to uproot their life in England and move to the shores of Lake Victoria.

It’s that sort of impact that David thinks will help them achieve their goals. ‘Even the most cynical piece of work on the planet has to see the potential of what we’re doing,’ he says, grinning, ‘and the finest moments aren’t a cheetah taking down a wildebeest, they’re about making a genuine cultural connection.’ Who could disagree with that?