Is Extreme Heat Changing the Way We Travel Across Africa?

At Egypt's archaeological sites, the sun, once considered a god, is now a disruptive force as tour operators shift visits to early mornings or, when possible, to around sunset. For Rami Ghali, founder of Italy-based travel agency Club Amici Veri, sending European travellers south towards Luxor and Aswan at the height of summer requires an increasingly careful consideration.

According to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), North Africa is the continent's fastest-warming subregion, with an average temperature of 1.28°C above the 1991-2020 average.

Across the African continent, whose tourism economy is deeply tied to the outdoors — from Egypt’s temples to Botswana’s safaris and Cabo Verde’s coastlines — extreme heat is beginning to change the basic geography and rhythms of a holiday. What happens to African tourism when the seasons travellers have traditionally relied on become less predictable?

A calendar adjustment

“Rising temperatures don’t simply mean everyone moves their holiday to October. People's lives aren't that flexible. Parents have school calendars and workers have annual leave,” says Ghali. European travel patterns are culturally tied to July and August, so destinations and tour operators have to adapt around that. Professor Jarrko Saarien, a tourism geographer at the University of Oulu, Finland, and visiting professor in Johannesburg, looks at Europe as an example, where shoulder seasons are becoming more attractive as travellers reconsider traditional high season holidays. Still, he emphasises “there is not yet enough research to demonstrate that same shift happening across Southern Africa where research remains limited.”

In the volcanic island nation of Cabo Verde, Juliana Vaz, a Mozambican American, multidisciplinary producer, sees climate change intersecting with another transformation: remote work and increasingly flexible lifestyles. Together, they argue, “these changes could allow some travellers to escape uncomfortable temperatures without necessarily taking time away from work.” Rather than redrawing the tourism seasons, climate shifts could make the boundaries more fluid.

A vibe shift

For safari adventures in Southern Africa, planning the day around the heat has always been an integral element of the itinerary.

Beks Ndlovu, founder of African Bush Camps, has worked in the field for more than three decades. During hotter periods, guests can start their days before sunrise and return to camp by mid-morning. 

What concerns the Zimbabwean native is the less predictable changes he has observed over time. “A longer dry period in some areas, more intense rainfall in others, and river systems rising and falling differently. Those shifts affect vegetation and wildlife, including birds nesting in floodplains whose nests can be disrupted when rains arrive abruptly,” he shares.

Disturbances like these highlight why Saarinen contends “drought, water scarcity, wildfires, extreme weather and biodiversity loss may ultimately pose a greater challenge to African tourism and tourists simply feeling hot in nature-based destinations.” Changing weather patterns can alter the very landscape and wildlife people have travelled to experience.

The threat also extends offshore. In another WMO report, sea surface temperatures around Africa reached record highs in 2024, with almost the entire surrounding ocean experiencing strong, severe, or extreme marine heat at some point during the year. Climate pressures could therefore alter more than when an excursion begins; it could change what travellers encounter when they get there.

An acclimated state

Comfort is not the only looming concern. Travel and tourism contributed $228 billion to the African economy in 2025, equivalent to 7% of regional GDP, and supported 30.2 million jobs, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council. Protecting this economy means destinations will need to adapt. 

Seemingly, the most obvious response to rising temperatures is more air-conditioning, but greater cooling also requires more energy, creating tension between adapting to a warming climate and limiting the emissions that contribute to it. Saarien says: “some tourism businesses are already experimenting with rainwater harvesting, grey-water recycling, decentralised renewable energy and architecture that encourages natural air flow”.

For Vaz, as seen with their own work at SOLM and OLIO, warmer conditions present an opportunity to reconsider the assumption that modernisation requires imported Western ways of building. “Places that were never even hot are now super hot. And the places that are already hot could become insufferable. Instead of responding simply with more mechanical cooling, Vaz points towards locally available materials and older building traditions. In Cabo Verde, that could mean local clays, while in Mozambique, bamboo, timber and fibres. Earth-based materials such as adobe and rammed earth can also offer thermal benefits. “The idea isn’t to romanticise the past but to combine it with contemporary engineering,” they underscore.

Saarien makes a similar argument by rejecting the notion of “copy and paste” climate solutions between the Global North and South; instead, he suggests looking at approaches in specific places, including indigenous and traditional lodges that remain underused in tourism. “Africa’s adaptation story doesn’t necessarily have to be one of catching up. Some of the knowledge needed to build for extreme environments has existed on the continent for generations,” he points out.

A redefined holiday

There is another vulnerability hiding inside the climate conversation: what African tourism sells?

International tourism across much of South Africa remains heavily associated with wildlife and wilderness. As those ecosystems become vulnerable, Saarinen spotlights efforts in countries such as Botswana and Namibia as case studies on how to diversify into cultural and community-based tourism, potentially reducing dependence on wildlife while creating greater opportunities for local participation

For Vaz, that recalibration has to include the communities in which tourism operates. “Infrastructure matters,” they say, “but travellers ultimately seek connection with people.” Tourism development without meaningful local participation and ownership risks reproducing extractor relationships the continent already knows far too well.

Ndlovu similarly sees local employment and environmental education as central to preparing tourism landscapes for what is ahead. “The climate effect is already in effect,” he says. The question is how to prepare both landscapes and people to understand it.

The African holiday may increasingly happen at different times of the year. Safari may begin earlier; hotels may rely on different materials. And travellers may venture beyond wildlife experiences that long defined how parts of the continent are marketed abroad.

But adapting to a hotter world also allows African destinations to decide what should remain unchanged, what needs to evolve, and whose knowledge should shape what comes next. Instead of simply finding ways to preserve tourism as it exists today, climate change may force a more fundamental question: what should the African holiday of the future actually look like?