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Tim Draper says he has received several offers for the Tanzanian island he advertised on X for $7.9 million, and expects it to sell quickly.
What buyers are bidding on is not the island.
Tanzania's Ministry of Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development issued a statement on Aug. 31 identifying the property as Lupita Island in Nkasi District, Rukwa Region, and said the land belongs to the Tanzania Investment and Special Economic Zones Authority. TISEZA granted Firelight Safaris a derivative right to develop and operate a tourist hotel there. Draper is one of Firelight's shareholders.
Any sale therefore transfers his interest in the company and the resort assets, not the ground beneath them. Tanzanian law vests land in the state even for approved foreign investment projects.
Draper made no mention of that when he listed it. He posted on Aug. 28 that he was selling his island in Lake Tanganyika, called it a gorgeous place his family did not use enough, set the price at $7.9 million or best offer, and gave his own work email address. There was no broker, no listing and no data room.
He told Forbes the following day that offers had already come in and the property looked likely to sell quickly.
The asset itself is real enough. Lupita has been developed since 2004 into a luxury resort of ten cottages sleeping up to 26 guests, reached by chartered aircraft and boat. Accounts differ on its size, with Forbes reporting 110 acres and other sources 130.
The setting is unusual. Lake Tanganyika is the longest freshwater lake in the world and the second deepest after Baikal, shared by Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Zambia. The Tanzanian stretch holds the lake's only archipelago, about 180 kilometres south of the Mahale Mountains, and most of those islands are uninhabited.
Draper co-founded Draper Fisher Jurvetson and now runs Draper Associates. He is commonly described as a Tesla and SpaceX investor, though both positions were taken at DFJ where his partner Steve Jurvetson led the deals. He made a substantial fortune in bitcoin, buying roughly 30,000 coins at a United States Marshals auction in 2014.
Neither Draper nor Firelight Safaris has responded publicly to the ministry's statement.
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