ABOUT OGS
OUR TRAINERS
ABOUT OGS
// ABOUT
ABOUT AGA
African Guide Academy lies in the heart of the Okavango Delta, Botswana, Africa.
Our home, the Okavango Delta, has been declared a World heritage site because of its pristine ecosystems, its scenic beauty, and abundance of wildlife. It is one of the most scenically spectacular wildlife areas anywhere in the world.
​African Guide Academy is owned and operated by the Reed family. Their passion for nature was documented in the wildlife series
“Safari Brothers” which aired internationally on National Geographic Wild.
African Guide Academy was born from Okavango Guiding School and is the first private guide training school registered in Botswana to provide training for guides on both the Field Guide Association of Southern Africa (FGASA) and the Botswana Qualifications Authority (BQA) platforms.
WHERE IT BEGAN
Royce Reed was born in 1912 into a different world where conservation was far from fashionable. Despite the times Royce was an avid collector of snakes and had an insatiable curiosity when it came to birds and in particular their breeding and migration.
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It was these early amateur naturalists who made the most significant contributions to our knowledge of birds and other wildlife. It was Royce’s contagious enthusiasm and generosity in sharing both his time and knowledge with others that made him the remarkable teacher that he was. It was during one of his lectures, aimed at changing people’s attitudes to snakes, that Royce began the family trend of surviving bites from venomous snakes when he was bitten by a Puff Adder. Later his grandsons would go on to survive puff-adder, cobra and mamba bites attained while removing snakes as a public service.
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Amongst the people whom Royce inspired and mentored was Kenneth Newman who went on to author the Field Guide of the Birds of Southern Africa. This was popular field guide to birds of southern Africa for several decades and is still the book of choice for many birders.
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Royce was an avid bird ringer (bander) and together with his sons, he ringed tens of thousands of birds. His efforts were rewarded by having the first retrieval of an African bird in Europe (a Barn Swallow in Helsinki, Finland). This was a major breakthrough in understanding where the South African migrants were going.
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3 generations later the passion is undiluted.