Zibadianja Lagoon, Selinda Reserve, northern Botswana. Four tented suites opened in 2008 as the first Botswana camp of Great Plains Conservation, the company Dereck and Beverly Joubert date to 2006. The pair had leased the surrounding ground, 320,000 acres of former hunting concession, in 2004 and ended the shooting on it at once. Zarafa is this Library’s clearest case of a camp built to pay for a decision already taken about the land under it.
The house
Dereck and Beverly Joubert first travelled to Botswana in 1981 and formed Wildlife Films there in 1985; Great Plains describes them as co-owners of the company and as National Geographic Explorers at Large. Robb Report records that the pair “leased this 320,000-acre former hunting concession in 2004 and immediately ceased all hunting on the property”. Great Plains dates its own founding to 2006, with Dereck as chief executive. Zarafa opened two years after that, on the bank of the Zibadianja Lagoon, which the company calls the source of the Savuti Channel.
The camp holds four suites, each “over 100 square meters (1000 square feet) under flowing canvas”, raised on reclaimed railway sleeper decking behind hand-crafted Zanzibar doors. Great Plains says the construction is of recycled hardwoods and canvas and that the camp’s electricity comes from its on-site solar farm. A two-bedroom suite of 210 square metres, the Dhow Suite, stands a few minutes’ walk away with a personal butler, chef, private safari vehicle and wildlife guide of its own. The company gives the most recent rework as 2023 and describes its Réserve-Collection camps as “Botswana’s only Relais & Châteaux members”; Luxury London calls Zarafa the country’s first. No architect or designer is named on any page fetched for this entry.
What distinguishes it
The lease came four years before the camp Robb Report records the Jouberts leasing the 320,000-acre Selinda block in 2004 and ceasing all hunting on it immediately. Zarafa opened in 2008. The order matters: the ground was taken out of hunting before there was any lodge standing on it to pay for the decision, and Great Plains Conservation itself dates only to 2006, two years after the lease.
Four rooms on 320,000 acres Robb Report counts “only three camps with a total of just 16 rooms in the entire reserve”, of which Zarafa holds four. Luxury London gives the reserve as approximately 130,000 hectares, a block Great Plains describes as linking the Okavango Delta with the Linyanti waterways. The bed density is the commercial form the conservation lease takes; it is a constraint written into the arrangement rather than a consequence of scarce ground.
Off-grid from the first season Great Plains states that the camp’s construction “consists of recycled hardwoods and canvas, and its electricity comes from its on-site solar farm”. Luxury London reports that the camp “launched completely off-grid and reliant on solar power”. In 2008 that was an engineering condition of building 320,000 acres from the nearest line, not a position taken for publication.
The copper bath is claimed as a first, by the company that made it Great Plains writes that Zarafa “was our first luxury safari camp in Botswana” and that “it was here that we first added our beautiful copper baths to the suite’s bathrooms”. The claim is the company’s own and is made about its own portfolio rather than about the category. It is recorded here as the house’s claim and not as the register’s finding.
A conservation ledger that is published and a lease that is not Great Plains publishes figures for its programmes: Rhinos Without Borders is “an initiative that has moved 87 rhinos from high poaching areas to safety”, and the Big Cats Initiative was begun “with over 150 grants in 29 countries”. Nothing fetched for this entry gives the length of the Selinda lease, the rent paid, or the authority that granted it.
Zarafa is reached by scheduled inter-camp light aircraft from Maun or Kasane and is published from US$2,250 per person sharing per night on a two-night minimum. There are four suites, one dining room and no second camp within reach of a drive. A guest who wants a choice of rooms, a choice of restaurants, or a short transfer will not find any of the three here.
Signature rooms and dates
Competitive landscape
People anchored here
Sources
What the entry rests on, read 13 October 2026. Each reference records the facts it supports, so a disputed line can be traced to the account it came from.