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FOLLOWING THE INVISIBLE LINE – TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER.
In January 2026, the Kingsley Holgate Foundation set out on its 43rd geographic and humanitarian expedition: Africa Traverse — a high-adventure 14,200-kilometre west-to-east journey across Southern Africa, following the Tropic of Capricorn from Namibia to Mozambique.
Twenty-five years earlier, Kingsley, Ross and the late Gill Holgate had followed this same latitude during their world-first Tropic of Capricorn Expedition. That journey became a National Geographic series and Kingsley’s second book, Following the Invisible Line.
It was a return to a route that had helped define the Foundation’s spirit of adventure — with 25 years of experience, purpose and humanitarian action behind it.
Africa Traverse began at Sandwich Bay on Namibia’s Skeleton Coast, where the Atlantic Ocean meets one of Africa’s most inhospitable landscapes and where the Tropic of Capricorn touches Africa’s western edge. From there the team tracked due east, straight into a high-adventure, heart-in-mouth 4×4 crossing of the soaring red dunes of the ancient Namib Desert and the folding landscape of the Gramadoelas.
In Botswana, the Defender convoy explored the Kalahari – the largest mantle of vegetated sand in the world – dodging massive rainstorms to reach the moonscape-like salt crust of the vast Makgadikgadi Pans, conducting humanitarian and conservation work and spending unforgettable time with the Bushmen.
Remaining true to the 23°27′ latitude line, the expedition entered South Africa, trekking through remote wilderness and tracing sections of the historic Ivory Trail, before crossing the Limpopo into flood-ravaged Mozambique, where the final kilometres became a demanding test of endurance, determination and vehicle capability.
The fleet included two new Defender 130 Outbounds — ‘Moyo’, meaning Heart, and ‘Isibindi’, meaning Courage — a Defender 110 Puma (‘Kaptein’) and the legendary classic Defender Tdi, ‘Mashozi’.
But the real measure of the expedition was never the kilometres travelled; it was the lives touched along the way. Africa Traverse carried the Foundation’s humanitarian programmes directly into communities where distance and extreme conditions make access difficult.
Malaria prevention was the expedition’s most urgent priority, and Mozambique brought its purpose sharply into focus. Severe flooding had destroyed roads and bridges, turned farmlands into vast lakes and isolated hundreds of villages. At the same time, malaria cases were surging. The Defenders became lifelines, reaching isolated homesteads and clinics to deliver long-lasting insecticide-treated mosquito nets to pregnant women and mothers with young children.
Since 2000, the Kingsley Holgate expedition team has distributed more than 473,300 long-lasting insecticide-treated mosquito nets, helping protect over 1.4 million mothers and children from malaria.
Africa Traverse also carried the Foundation’s Rite to Sight campaign into remote communities. By distributing reading spectacles to elderly and poor-sighted villagers, the expedition restored something many people take for granted — the ability to read, work, recognise a loved one’s face and participate in everyday life.
The expedition continued the Foundation’s Wildlife Art and conservation education programme, using creativity and storytelling to inspire young people to become custodians of Africa’s iconic wildlife. The initiative has now reached more than 700,000 learners, helping build a generation that understands that protecting elephant, rhino and other threatened wildlife is inseparable from protecting the communities and landscapes where they live.
After more than 80 days of heat, dust, sand, mud tracks, no tracks and extraordinary encounters across four countries, the expedition reached the Indian Ocean.
On Mozambique’s shoreline at exactly 23°27′ where the original Capricorn expedition ended 25 years ago, Kingsley and Ross emptied the expedition calabash of Atlantic seawater into the Indian Ocean, symbolically joining the two oceans and completing a journey that had begun three months earlier on Namibia’s western shores.
For 25 years, Defender has helped the Kingsley Holgate Foundation reach places where conventional vehicles cannot go. Across deserts, floodplains, river crossings, impenetrable forests, remote wilderness, mud tracks, goat tracks and no tracks, the Defenders are not simply tough expedition vehicles – they are tools for humanitarian action.
Africa Traverse was a journey of exploration, connection, humanitarian work and conservation but above all, another chapter in the Foundation’s enduring belief that every journey can be a force for good – saving and improving lives through adventure.
