Inn-keepers at heart.
Angama was founded by Steve and Nicky Fitzgerald, after decades spent building some of East Africa's most respected safari lodges. This is the one they built for themselves.
A final, deeply personal project.
Steve and Nicky Fitzgerald had already spent decades building and running some of East Africa's most respected safari lodges — including years with &Beyond, developing properties across the region — by the time they set out to build something entirely their own.
That project became Angama Mara: a site chosen specifically for its escarpment view, a name drawn from the Swahili word for "suspended in mid-air," and a design philosophy built around one simple instruction to the architects — never let the building compete with the view.
What followed, first with Angama Amboseli and later the Safari Camp, was less an expansion strategy than a continuation of the same instinct: find a setting worth protecting, build as lightly as possible on top of it, and staff it with people who treat guests the way they'd want to be treated themselves.
See how that instinct shapes the Foundation →Contemporary African design, built around a view.
Every Angama building starts the same way: with the view, not the walls. Glass fronts run floor to ceiling wherever possible. Structures are raised on stilts or set back from the ground to minimise their footprint. Materials lean local — canvas, timber, stone — rather than imported for the sake of polish.
The result is a style we've come to think of as contemporary African design: modern in construction and comfort, but unmistakably rooted in where it stands, and never louder than the landscape it's built to frame.
See it in the suites at Angama Mara →The Leaning Giraffe.
Angama's brandmark — a giraffe, leaning — comes from an actual animal spotted during the earliest scouting trips for the lodge, resting its weight against an acacia at the top of the escarpment. It seemed, at the time, like the right kind of symbol: something tall and slightly improbable, at ease in a landscape most visitors only ever see moving fast.
It's a small story, and we've never tried to inflate it into something grander than it is. But it's stayed with us since, and it's the reason the giraffe still marks nearly everything we make.
Read the full story in the Journal →The people behind the stay.
A few of the faces guests see most, across our three properties.
Joseph Ntoyian
Head Guide, Angama MaraRaised within sight of the escarpment, and guiding the Mara Triangle for over fifteen years.
Naisula Sankale
Camp Manager, Angama AmboseliThe person most guests describe as "the reason we felt so looked after" during their stay.
David Kimani
Executive Chef, Angama MaraBehind every bush breakfast, lantern-lit dinner, and Out of Africa picnic on the property.
Grace Wanjiru
Foundation CoordinatorManages the day-to-day relationship between Angama and the communities it leases land from.
Where this story lives.
Come and meet us properly.
The best way to understand Angama is still to stay with us — our reservations team is glad to help you plan that.