Budget Birding Africa

Budget Birding Africa is a Kampala-based birding operator running guided trips across Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania, including Zanzibar and Pemba. The company grew out of Uganda Eco Tours, founded roughly fifteen years ago by Deogratius Muhumuza, a Makerere University tourism graduate who began birding professionally as a researcher and excursion leader with NatureUganda and later carried out survey work with the Wildlife Conservation Society in Uganda. Operating from Station House on Kampala Road, the outfit positions itself around value-for-money itineraries — modest but comfortable lodging, local guides, and unhurried pacing, on the reasoning that "birders like to stay a little longer at destinations." Trading as "The Fundi Birders of Eastern Africa," the company works through a network of site-based and freelance guides in each country rather than flying leaders in, and makes a point of training women birding guides in every country it visits. Trips range from Mabamba Swamp Shoebill day trips and a four-day Pemba endemics run to an eleven-day Uganda Shoebill and Albertine Rift endemics circuit, a twelve-day Kenya endemics tour, a twenty-two-day Tanzania Arc Mountains itinerary, and a thirty-day East African coastal forest and mountain crossing. Wildlife and primate extensions — gorilla and chimpanzee tracking, Serengeti and Tarangire safaris — are offered alongside the birding programme.