Well one thing, would be that they will probably recommend that you buy travel insurance and from a 3rd party. That will help give you a clue first. Also that is a good thing because of the amount of money involved and the distance and other things that all come into play. This is not a simple trip to the caribbean, so in this case, because of even the airfare, travel insurance is probably really needed.

That will also protect you from the agent taking the money and running, at least th policy we had did.

Africa is probably not something that is in a huge demand in your area, so being a one person shop without even a store front would not be suprising. You can probably also get more information from maybe the resorts, just don't know what exactly you are dealing with at this point, so it is hard to say. The one we dealt with was also known by the camps, so that says something there regardling reliability I think.