Philip Briggs (philipbriggs.com) has been exploring the highways, byways and backwaters of Africa since 1986, when he backpacked on a shoestring from Nairobi to Cape Town. He is the world’s leading author of guidebooks to African countries, with more than 30 years’ experience. During the 1990s, he wrote pioneering Bradt travel guides to countries that were then – and in some cases still are – otherwise practically uncharted by the travel industry. These include the first dedicated guidebooks to Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique and Ghana, new editions of which have been published regularly ever since. He has visited over two dozen African countries and written about most for magazines including BBC Wildlife, Travel Africa and Wanderlust, and in ten other Bradt guidebooks, including East Africa Wildlife. When not travelling, usually accompanied by his wife, travel photographer Ariadne Van Zandbergen, he lives in the sleepy South African village of Wilderness.

A freelance photographer and tour guide, Ariadne Van Zandbergen took most of the photographs for this book and contributed to the research. Born and raised in Belgium, she travelled through Africa from Morocco to South Africa in 1994–5 and is now resident in Wilderness, Western Cape, South Africa. She has visited 25 African countries, and her photographs have appeared in numerous books, magazines, newspapers, maps, periodicals and pamphlets. In addition to co-photographing the sumptuous coffee-table book Africa: Continent of Contrasts (Struik/New Holland), she runs her own online photo library (africaimagelibrary.com).