The cheapest way in
Kasabushi Camp
A camp and campsite inside the park that publishes its full rate card, with private riverside pitches from $35 and chalets that compare with lodges at twice the price.
Zambia · national park since 1950
Kafue National Park Independent Guides & Information
Zambia's largest and oldest national park covers 22,400 square kilometres, holds 21 antelope species, the country's biggest cheetah population and the lion prides of the Busanga Plains. Entry costs $20 a day, self-drivers pay no premium, and you will often have a sighting entirely to yourself.
Photo: Timothy A. Gonsalves (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The Category B fee facts: self-drivers pay $20, not more
All 27 lodges and camps, plus the ones that quietly closed
Straight answers on the Busanga window, fuel and 4x4
Independent, and paid by nobody in this listing
Where Kafue National Park is, and which gate you want
Kafue sits in central-western Zambia, split between the seasonal Busanga floodplain in the north and Lake Itezhi-Tezhi in the south, with nine gates and five airstrips spread across 22,400 square kilometres. There is no single road that crosses the park quickly, and phone signal is the exception rather than the rule.
- 1 Chunga airstrip Central sector; the park's northern operations base and airfield
- 2 Lufupa airstrip Serves the north-western river camps
- 3 Busanga airstrip Seasonal strip for the Busanga Plains camps
- 4 Ngoma airstrip Southern sector; park headquarters and Lake Itezhi-Tezhi
- 5 Hippo airstrip Serves the north-eastern camps
- Pan with a hide or viewing platform
- Dam
- Gate or barrier on the map
- Tarred trunk road
Why this guide exists, and where the numbers come from
This guide is written by someone who overlanded much of Africa in his own Land Cruiser with a rooftop tent, and for whom the national parks were what stayed. The information about them online was usually missing, wrong or years old: fees from three tariff sheets ago, camps that had closed, roads described by people who had never driven them.
So this guide runs on the park authority's own tariff document rather than a copied operator page, on thirty-year climate normals rather than brochure weather, and on what the camps tell us directly. Every claim carries a date. Where DNPW is silent, so are we, apart from saying that it is silent.
Nothing here is for sale. Listing a camp is free and no position on any page can be bought. Some outbound links earn us a small commission, and that changes neither the order of a list nor a single figure on these pages.
Found something out of date? Tell us and it changes the same week.
Where to stay in Kafue National Park
From a riverside campsite to a fig-tree island in the Busanga Plains. These four are not the best four; they are the four that mark out the range.
Run by the park authority
Chunga Safari Camp & Campsite
Beside DNPW's own headquarters and airfield at Chunga, and the one state-run camp we could identify. Nothing about it is bookable online; ask at the gate or through DNPW.
Mid-range, easiest to reach
Mukambi Safari Lodge
On the riverbank where the M9 crosses the Kafue, reachable in an ordinary car in about four hours from Lusaka, and independently owned since 2001.
The top end
Shumba Camp
Wilderness's flagship in Zambia, on a fig-tree island in the Busanga Plains, with raised decks that look straight over the floodplain the park is famous for.
Everything you need to plan a visit
Entry fees
Kafue is a Category B park: $20 a day for internationals with no self-drive surcharge, unlike South Luangwa. The full table, and what nobody can verify.
See the fees →Lodges & camps
All 27 current options, from $25 riverside pitches to the fig-island camps of the Busanga Plains, plus the closed lodges other sites still list.
Browse lodges →Getting there
The M9 tar road puts the Kafue River about four hours from Lusaka, and the southern gate is two and a half hours from Livingstone. Busanga is another story.
Plan the route →Wildlife
The Busanga lion prides, Zambia's best cheetah odds, red lechwe in their thousands, 21 antelope species and a 515-strong bird list.
What you'll see →Best time to visit
Two parks in one: the Busanga Plains open around early July, while the south and centre run a far longer season. Month by month.
Pick your month →Things to do
Night drives are actually permitted here, walking trails run up to six days, boats work three rivers, and hot-air balloons fly the Busanga Plains.
See activities →Our own research
We priced every park in Africa
We collect the official tariff of every park we cover, convert it, and hold each one to the same standard day. Twenty-nine parks are in the index now, the famous ones included. These three pages come out of that table.
The most expensive safari parks in Africa
Ngorongoro charges $278 for a standard day and $148 of that is the descent into the crater. The ranking straight down, with the line item behind each number.
See the ranking →The most expensive parks for self-drivers
One person, one car, no one to split the vehicle fee or the campsite with. Uganda's foreign-vehicle tariff turns the order upside down.
See the self-drive ranking →Africa's most expensive published safari beds
The highest nightly rates any camp in our network puts in writing, and why the real top of the market names no price at all.
See the rates →Latest updates to this guide
Every change to this guide, dated.
- 2026-09-29 Bongololo is Mozhi Bush Camp's own campsite, about 2 km by road from the lodge, not a separate business. Shearzone Safaris, who run both, confirmed it in writing, so the two pages now say so and point to the same booking desk. See the page
- 2026-09-17 Hippo Lodge now shows its 2027 rack rate of $380 per person per day all-inclusive, sent by the lodge, instead of a starting figure. The boat hire and transfer rates are on the page too.
- 2026-09-16 Bongololo is open. A traveller booked and paid for two nights there in September, invoiced by Shearzone Safaris, so the page now tells you how to book it instead of warning you that we could not check.
- 2026-09-15 Added Malala Wilderness Campsite on Lake Itezhi-Tezhi, which African Parks runs itself and which we had missed entirely. A traveller with a confirmed booking there asked us who to chase about it.
- 2026-09-15 Traced Bongololo Campsite after its website vanished. A guest review from July 2026 says the camp was open that month, so the page now carries its phone number instead of a dead link.