The Best Places to Go in Africa in 2024

15.11.2023 - 14:33 / cntraveler.com

This is part of our global guide to the Best Places to Go in 2024—find more travel inspiration here.

This past year saw a surge of travel throughout destinations in Africa, with air travel across the continent approaching prepandemic levels. Safari camps from South Africa to Kenya were fully booked, and travelers lingered in popular destinations like Cape Town and Zanzibar well past peak season. What does this mean for the year ahead?

A wave of hotly anticipated luxury resorts—many of which were in the works long before grinding to a halt in the pandemic—are finally ready to throw open their doors, new air routes are making parts of the continent more accessible than ever, and popular events and festivals are enticing visitors to explore regions they may not have contemplated before. Yes, there are plenty of thrilling safari camps in the pipeline that we’re excited about, from iconic corners of Botswana to a less-visited park in Mozambique, but there’s also a compelling food movement in Accra, a milestone anniversary in Rwanda, a monumental new cultural landmark in Morocco’s capital city of Rabat, and so much more to look forward to. Could this be the year Johannesburg pries visitors away from Cape Town with a cool new city hotel and a dynamic dining scene, or when sunseekers take another look at Mauritius instead of the Maldives? Might you sail into Madagascar on an adventurous new cruising itinerary or consider adding Sierra Leone to your travel plans? Frankly, the hardest part will be choosing. Below are the best places to go in Africa in 2024. —Sarah Khan

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Go for: the heart of a pan-African cultural renaissance, Indigenous pop-up dinners, Afrobeats

Accra has steadily been cementing its reputation as the continent’s capital of cool, and a reimagining of pan-African heritage has ignited the city’s foodies. Leading the way is the Ghana Food Movement, a network of food change makers intent on surfacing the sexy in sustainable dining. With the May 2024 opening of its Link-up Kitchen in the buzzing Osu neighborhood, this meeting place–cum–test kitchen will house the Movement’s popular Dine and Dance series, where young chefs highlight local ingredients in multicourse dinners before getting down to beats by local DJs. The hub will also host pop-ups featuring up-and-coming chefs and Indigenous menus, such as those offered by Abena Offeh-Gyimah, whose food tours spotlight heirloom ingredients and a “reconnection to ancestral ways of eating.” This year also sees chef Selassie Atadika of Midunu resuming her Nomadic Dinners