Solio Reserve Companion

The brief

Solio is a rhino sanctuary in Laikipia, Kenya, where guests drive themselves and there is little signal. The map app guests had used was withdrawn, leaving the reserve without a way for visitors to find their way around.

The reserve wanted guests to see its own hand-drawn map, not a generic one, and to avoid getting lost. And nothing in the app could ever help someone find the rhinos.

What we built

• The reserve's 28-megapixel illustrated poster matched to real coordinates, so the GPS dot sits on the right drawn track, gate or dam
• The reserve's rules and gate hours on the welcome screen
• Your location stays on your phone; nothing is sent anywhere
• Works fully offline once loaded, and installs to the home screen
• QR code posters at the gate, so guests can install it on arrival
• No animal locations stored or shown anywhere, by design

How it turned out

The new map went live on 22 July 2026, after every numbered point on it was checked against real GPS readings on the ground. The whole app is about 1.2 MB, small enough to load at the gate.

It costs nothing to run, and the reserve owns all of the code.

Visit map.soliogamereserve.org

This is app development work. See everything we do.