Maps and navigation
Kafue National Park map
An interactive map of a park the size of a small country, GPS coordinates for the five main airstrips, and how to navigate 22,400 square kilometres where phone signal is the exception rather than the rule.
Download the official park map
DNPW publishes no downloadable Kafue map. The most useful official resources are the visitkafue.org portal run by African Parks and the roads-and-airstrips reference maintained by the Kafue Park Operators Association; for self-driving, the commercial Tracks4Africa mapping is the practical standard.
Key coordinates
Save these before you go. Mobile coverage inside the park is patchy at best, and a set of waypoints in an offline app will get you out of trouble faster than anything else.
| Place | What it is | Coordinates |
|---|---|---|
| Chunga airstrip | Central sector; the park's northern operations base and airfield | -15.0539, 25.9870 |
| Lufupa airstrip | Serves the north-western river camps | -14.6039, 26.1681 |
| Busanga airstrip | Seasonal strip for the Busanga Plains camps | -14.2928, 25.8969 |
| Ngoma airstrip | Southern sector; park headquarters and Lake Itezhi-Tezhi | -15.9658, 25.9333 |
| Hippo airstrip | Serves the north-eastern camps | -14.6720, 26.3864 |
Navigating Kafue
- Download offline maps before Mumbwa: Tracks4Africa covers the park's tracks, and OsmAnd or Organic Maps make a free backup. Expect no signal at many camps, Kasabushi included.
- Distances deceive here. The park is over 200 km north to south, gates close at 18:00, and internal tracks are slow, so plan each day around reaching a designated campsite or lodge; wild camping is prohibited.
- The Busanga tracks are seasonal and cross the Lufupa drainage; get written confirmation of conditions from your camp before attempting them, even in the dry season.
- Exact road distances to Chunga, Tateyoyo and Musa gates are only approximations in every available source; add margin to any time estimate.
- The airstrip coordinates above are the five published strips; several are seasonal, so confirm serviceability when booking a charter.
The geography that catches people out
On the central and southern stretch of the Kafue River, the river itself is the park boundary and the park lies on the west bank. Lodges on the east bank, KaingU among them, sit in the Namwala Game Management Area, which is why staying there incurs no daily park fee. Plenty of maps and guides draw this wrong.
Also worth knowing: the M9 corridor through the park and the Ngoma to Dundumwezi road are free transit routes, so you can cross Kafue without a permit. You pay park fees the moment you turn off the corridor into the game-viewing network.