Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary is a forested island on Lake Victoria, about 23 km from Entebbe, that has cared for orphaned and rescued chimpanzees since 1998. Around 50 chimps live there, most of them confiscated from the illegal pet and bushmeat trade, and they cannot be returned to the wild. Visitors arrive by boat and watch the chimps from a raised platform during feeding times.

What a visit is like

Day trips leave Entebbe by speedboat, taking around 45 minutes to an hour. The chimps spend most of the day in the island’s forest and come to the edge for supplementary feeds, usually late morning and mid-afternoon, when you can watch them from a viewing platform and hear caregivers explain each chimp’s story. Overnight stays in tented accommodation and caregiver experiences can also be booked.

Sanctuary and conservation

The sanctuary is run by the Chimpanzee Sanctuary and Wildlife Conservation Trust, which also supports conservation education and community projects. Because the chimps were rescued, the island also shows why poaching and the pet trade harm wild populations. It is a complement to, not a substitute for, seeing wild chimps in Kibale.

Planning your visit

Bring sun protection and a light rain jacket for the boat, and check boat times when booking. The gorilla permit costs US$800, or US$600 in April, May and November. See our guides to chimpanzee facts, Kibale Forest, a gorilla and Ngamba itinerary and the Uganda Wildlife Conservation Education Centre.

Frequently asked questions

The Ngamba Island Experience in Full

The boat transfer from Entebbe to Ngamba Island — a 45-minute crossing of Lake Victoria — provides the transition from the mainland’s urban environment to the island’s forest and lakeside setting that amplifies the sanctuary experience’s contrast with Kampala’s activity. The boat departure times from the Entebbe Pier are typically scheduled for 9am and sometimes again for 1pm, and the return trips in the afternoon and early evening allow visitors to choose between a half-day or a full-day island visit. The Chimpanzee Sanctuary and Wildlife Conservation Trust, which operates the island, uses the visitor fee revenue to fund the chimps’ daily food, veterinary care, and the staff costs of the 45-person team that manages the sanctuary’s operations.

The feeding platform viewing — the primary visitor experience at Ngamba — allows close observation of the chimps’ food-competition behaviour and social dynamics during the twice-daily supervised feeding sessions (typically at 11am and 3pm). The 49 chimpanzees in residence at the time of the sanctuary’s most recent comprehensive count represent individuals from across Uganda, rescued from a range of situations including confiscation from illegal wildlife trade, orphaning when their mothers were killed in the bushmeat trade, and surrender by Ugandan families who had kept chimps as pets before Uganda’s wildlife laws were enforced more systematically.

The optional ‘chimp keeper for a day’ programme that Ngamba Island offers allows visitors to participate in the food preparation and distribution activities that the keeper team carries out daily — a direct engagement with the sanctuary’s operation that provides the behind-the-scenes content that the standard viewing platform visit cannot. The programme requires advance booking through the Chimpanzee Sanctuary Trust’s Entebbe office and is priced at a premium above the standard sanctuary entry fee.

The Lake Victoria Crossing and Island Setting

The 45-minute boat crossing from the Entebbe pier to Ngamba Island traverses a section of Lake Victoria’s northern shore that provides a visual context for the lake’s scale — the horizon in every direction is water, with the Ssese Islands visible as a low dark line to the southwest and the Ugandan mainland’s papyrus shoreline receding behind the departing boat. The crossing itself is a wildlife activity for birders in the group, since the Lake Victoria tern (Sternula balaenarum) and the African Fish Eagle are regularly sighted from the boat, and the open-water flying sequence of the large pelican flocks that use this section of the lake is among the most visually dramatic bird spectacles in the Entebbe area. The island’s forest — approximately 40 hectares of indigenous forest that the Chimpanzee Sanctuary maintains as a 95-hectare reserve boundary — is the area that the 49 resident chimpanzees use for their daily activity, with the electric fence that separates the forest interior from the visitors’ area providing safety rather than restricting the chimps’ movement within their allocated territory. The island’s isolation from the mainland also removes the human habitation noise that most Uganda wildlife sites carry — the absence of motorbikes, generators, and the ambient agriculture of the mainland gives the Ngamba Island setting a quality of natural quiet that the Entebbe area’s otherwise busy character makes surprising.