In 1997 the internet was in its infancy and people still gathered most of their travel ideas and advice from newspapers and magazines. On the newsstand in the UK at the time, there were four travel magazines (all still going today) and thirteen on model railways! The only real coverage Africa garnered was on the news, and that was almost exclusively negative.
So we decided to launch Travel Africa in an attempt to reassure people that the continent was safer than they might think, and to showcase its diverse natural and cultural heritage. The Africa being portrayed in the media in the UK at that time was not the Africa we knew and loved.