The pygmy hippo is an Endangered mammal endemic to West Africa, of which only 2,000–3,000 are left in the wild. Until now genetic resources to conduct monitoring of wild populations and to facilitate captive breeding have been lacking. In this study we used restriction-site associated DNA sequencing of five pygmy hippo samples to generate 1,619 high confidence candidate single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) suitable for population genetic analysis. A subset of 10 of SNPs generated were validated via resequencing with 100 % success rate and through the use of KASPar DNA probes (Kbiosciences) with 90 % success rate. To facilitate future research we present the list of 1,619 SNPs ranked according to mean genotype confidence and mean coverage.