Nyerere National Park – Leading Most Scenic Park 2025
The 2025 World Travel Awards Ceremony held in Dar es Salaam on June 28, announced Nyerere National Park as Africa’s Leading Most Scenic National Park 2025. The competition was even stiffer as the park had to beat the continent’s top parks, but it prevailed and emerged victorious thanks to its natural beauty. In this blog, we take a closer look at this wildlife-rich park. Let’s see how it claimed a win over spectacular parks.
Nyerere National Park (previously Selous Game Reserve) continues to hold the title of Africa’s largest national park. It previously held the title of Africa’s largest game reserve before its upgrade into a national park in 2019. It’s remote and unexplored, making it more scenic than even the Serengeti.
Who were the other nominees?
Nyerere emerged as the winner from a list of heavyweight nominated parks across Africa. These include:
- Amboseli National Park, Kenya
- Victoria Falls National Park, Uganda
- Nyungwe Forest National Park, Rwanda
- Rwenzori Mountains National Park, Uganda
- Simien Mountains National Park, Ethiopia
- Namib-Naukluft National Park, Namibia
Claiming a title over these splendid destinations was no luck, a testament to its unexplored beauty, thanks to the Tanzania National Parks Authority (TANAPA), which has the mandate to protect this beautiful park.
Why does this award matter?
This award is proof of Nyerere’s attractions, which usually go unnoticed by many visitors. Many visitors, especially first-timers, would go for the Serengeti only because they’ve heard of it more than Ngorongoro. But the voters who have probably visited this park and witnessed its raw beauty have no other option than giving it an upvote. Nyerere is Africa’s most scenic park because it’s home to impressive scenes, including:
Scenic landscapes.
Have you ever been in a park with varied landscapes? A few meters you find an oxbow lake. Right in front appears a delta. As you turn left, you have a giant river, not to mention the seasonal lake on the right side. That park is Nyerere. This park comprises thick forests, hillsides, streams, rivers, and green plains.
The Rufiji River, which is the largest in East Africa, flows through the southern part of the park. The good news is that it’s navigable. Here, you can enjoy a boat ride – a unique experience not easily available in most northern parks. It gives the chance to view hippos and crocodiles up close.
The evergreen forests along this river make it picturesque. It’s here where you’ll get gorgeous pictures. Also, the mirror-like oxbow lakes and seasonal swamps make it full of scenes. There’s no blinking here, because if you blink, you lose a scene.
High concentration of wildlife
Nyerere National Park rarely disappoints when it comes to wildlife viewing. It’s one of the top wildlife-rich parks in Africa. The park has the highest population of hippos, which live in the mighty Rufiji River and a myriad of lakes and swamps. You can spot this giant semi-aquatic mammal basking in the sun in the morning.
The park is also home to the Big Five: lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, and buffalo. And, it made it to the shortlist of Africa’s Leading Big Five National Park 2025, an award which the Serengeti won. Here, you can see large elephant herds, large prides of lions, a thousand-strong buffalo herd, leopards, and rhinos. These five famous rulers of the jungle are known for their dangerous retaliatory attacks they showed to old-school hunters, something which gave them the title “Big Five.”
Nyerere is home to some of the rare antelope species, including Lichtenstein’s hartebeest, brindled gnu, and roan antelope. You can also see other antelopes, including eland, greater kudu, reedbuck, waterbuck, Nyasaland gnu, sable antelope, gazelle, and wildebeest. Other herbivores in Nyerere include giraffe, warthog, and zebra.
Nyerere is a haven for the African wild dogs. These painted hunting dogs are slowly recovering from a disease that wiped out, which took the lives of hundreds of thousands of them in the 1990s. But their population is larger in Nyerere compared to the northern parks. Other predators you can see include spotted hyenas, cheetahs, bat-eared foxes, jackals, and mongooses.
A promising concentration of birdlife
The scenes of Nyerere’s birds are even more spectacular. This park hosts about 440 species of birds. If you’re a fan of birds, it’s time to pull out your camera and binoculars. Otherwise, you’ll miss an important moment. You can spot rare birds like Pel’s fishing owl and white-backed heron in woodland along the riverbank.
When should you visit Nyerere National Park?
Nyerere National Park is good year-round. If you’re not a fan of rain, June to October is perfect. November and December receive occasional, short rains while January and February are dry. From March to May, the park is wet as rains fall heavily. This time is great, though, for scenic pictures and low rates.
Getting to Nyerere National Park
The main gateway to this park is Julius Nyerere International Airport (DAR), the crowned Africa’s Leading Airport 2025. We highly recommend flying from Dar es Salaam to airstrips inside this park. But you can drive from Dar es Salaam (280 km) via Kibiti to Nyerere National Park.
Final word
Come and see it by yourself! We are here to help you discover what made the jury crown Nyerere National Park the most scenic park in Africa. As always, we are just a call away.
