Monday, December 21, 2009

Christmas In Africa

The need to know what lies in other parts of the World is something that all of us have. We desire to experience other cultures, experience different climates and altitudes. We desire to experience other peoples ways of life including their foods, music and even religion. Little kids in Africa desire to experience a white Christmas, while kids in the affluent western World desire to know what it feels like to be a Masai kid living in a grass-thatched house with a hole in the ground for a "toilet". As the festive season draws nigh, there is a lot of hussle and bustle all around. Right from the small dusty shanty towns in Africa to the big cities like London. It is not uncommon to find mothers lining up at thier favorite tailors to get their kids measured up so they can get a decent dress for their little angels or "Kawunda suit" for their baby boys. Uganda Safaris

The most enterprising business people are reaping "big" in almost all small towns all across Africa. This is the time when people who have moved to the urban centers are beginning to move back to the rural areas where they originate from. It is a time for long "lost" relatives to come back and have a huge family reunion.

In Uganda for instance a kilo (2.2 pounds) of beef goes for approximately 2 US Dollars. This is because most of the beef is being exported to the neighboring countries of Sudan and Congo.

The holiday seasons have been highly commercialize. The transport companies have as usaul hiked the fare to upcountry towns and villages with some double or tripling the fare.

There are however those who have opted to have their Christmas in the jungles of Africa, away from the lit-up cities of Europe and America. I know of newly wed couples who have opted to spend their Christmas doing a gorilla tour in Bwindi impenetrable forest. Others have opted to do wildlife safaris in some of the largest national parks in the country like Queen Elizabeth national park.

All in all, this is a time for people to celebrate the birth of our LORD and SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST. And from me I wish you all a happy Christmas and New year.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Amuru District To Hire Professional Hunters

Wildlife in Murchison falls national park have been straying out of the national park into the neighboring districts especially to Amuru district. These animals have been causing havoc and some people have lost their lives.

However, Amuru district officials have now signed a memorandum of understanding with the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) and the Uganda Wildlife Safari to hire professional hunters to help in the possible capture of these stray animals.


According to Anthony Atube, the chairman of Amuru district, the professional hunters will help in getting rid of the wild animals in the areas of Achwa and Lolim which are found close to the areas of Murchison falls national park.

Murchison falls national park is one of the the largest national parks in Uganda and attracts lots of tourists annually. With a high diversity of plant and wildlife species coupled with the magestic Murchison falls, it is no wonder the park attracts lots of travelers to Uganda.

However recently, the residents of the villages of Alero, Purongo, Anaka and Koch-Goma have been experiencing damages to their crops and livestock from the marauding wildlife.

Uganda has a couple of travel packages and tourist attractions ranging from gorilla tour to adventure sporting activities like white water rafting and kayaking along the River Nile. If you want to information on how to book a gorilla trekking permit you can follow the link or click here

Friday, October 30, 2009

Google to Help Sell Uganda's Tourism

Uganda is a Country endowed with such great natural attractions ranging from its landscape and vegetation to a diversity of wildlife species and cultural experiences. However,the Country still has difficult task in promoting Uganda Safari packages unlike its neighboring Countries. When one mentions the word "safari" in the western world one automatically thinks of a Kenya safari or Tanzania safari. However, the Country of Uganda once described by Sir Winston Churchill as the "Pearl of Africa" has a great deal of tour attractions to offer. Among these is the gorilla tours, bird watching and wildlife tour packages in some of its large number of national parks.
It is exactly for this reason that Google has decided to extend its Google Earth and Google Map services to the Country so as to help the locals promote their tourist cultural and wildlife attractions to the rest of the world. Some of the most popular Uganda national park attractions are;

For more information you can visit the Uganda travel guide

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

British man wins Australian island dream job

A ostrich-riding, and bungee jumping adventure British man who has spent time doing charity work around the world and in Africa has been chosen as the care-taker of a tropical Island in Australia's Queensland State. Nearly 35,000 people from around the world applied for this job which has been dubbed the "best job" in the world by many. He is to earn 150,000 Australian dollars approximately $111,000 as salary and that is not all, he gets to live in a beautiful, well aerated-villa along one of these beautiful beaches. His job? Well, to swim, stroll the Islands' beautiful beaches and blog about it as a way of promoting this beautiful island.

Ben Southall's application video showed him riding an ostrich, on a safari in Africa trekking through its wilderness, running in a marathon and well, kissing a giraffe. All this depicted his love for adventure.

Ben Southall, 34, was selected for this envious job by the tourism department of Queensland state official. The shortlist of 15 finalists were taken to the Queensland Island to go through the last stage of their interview, which required them to...? Well you guessed it. All they had to do was munch on juicy barbecue, snorkel the clear waters of the Island, "unwind" at a spa and well go through a one-on-one interview.

The job starts in July and is part of a $1.7 campaign to promote the beauty of northern Queensland.

Wow!

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Monday, April 6, 2009

Tourism In Uganda And East Africa

TOUR operators have been warned against pricing outside the global market as the financial crisis hits. Geoffrey Baluku, a member of the Uganda Tourist Association, indicated that because of competition from neighbouring countries like Tanzania, Kenya and Rwanda, and affordability levels, the operators should avoid at all cost the urge to charge fees that are higher than the global market price.

“With the deepening of the global financial crisis and economic slowdown, there is a rise of new challenges ranging from safari cancellations to soaring inflation,” Baluku said.

A total of 843,864 foreigners visited Uganda in 2008, representing a 32% increase over 2007.

“As a key contributor to Uganda’s GDP (gross domestic product), tourism accounted for 3.7% of the total GDP in 2008. Despite this increase, it is clear that Uganda’s tourism industry is facing difficult times as a result of the financial meltdown,” Baluku stressed.

He said the tourism industry was vulnerable to financial slowdowns with consumers spending less on travel products in the short-and-medium terms.

Baluku added that expenditure on accommodation and Gorilla permits had decreased drastically as visitors chose more affordable safari options.

“There was growing optimism that Uganda would soon achieve the million foreign visitor-mark by 2012.

“However, with the current global economic meltdown characterised by the upcoming tense elections in 2011, the effect on Uganda’s tourism industry is likely to be worse,” said Baluku, who is also the public relations officer of the Association of Uganda Tour Operators.

Baluku said the unstable fuel costs and fluctuating dollar rate meant that long-haul tourism was on the decline, particularly for middle income tourists, adding that this had already had an effect on Uganda’s tourism industry.

“As long-haul travel becomes increasingly unaffordable, the integration of the East African region is now paramount for the region to achieve its tourism targets.

“However, reasonable controls such as some degree of protection for the Ugandan tour operators should be taken into consideration as we go into the final stages of the re-integration.”

He noted that there was a drop in visitors from all major markets including the UK and the US.
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Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Crocodiles offer a snappy investment option

Rearing crocodiles is one of the investment opportunities which Ugandans can exploit in a bid to benefit from the increasing global demand for its skin and meat.

Uganda as a country is naturally endowed with these creatures. Queen Elizabeth National Park has the biggest population.

On the world market, crocodiles skin/leather is used to make ladies’ bags, belts, wallets and classy shoes. For example, a wallet made out of a crocs skin costs $200 (Shs380,000).

Realising this potential, two Ugandan businessmen together with a Zimbabwean family with a wealth of experience in crocs rearing, partnered and formed a company called Uganda Crocs Limited in 1991, with the intention of making crocs a source of income.

Uganda Crocs Limited to achieve its export goals applied and secured an International Trade in endangered Species of Wild and Flora (CITES), for a quota to export at least 2,400 skins, annually.

Anyone with the passion to venture into this business, farming of crocodiles is done in an ecologically friendly way under close supervision from UWA and within the CITES regulations.

Mr Fred Kamugira, a director in the company, said; “With this kind of supervision, there is no threat to the existence of the Nile crocodile but instead any investor will be helping to conserve the species,”

Uganda Crocs has so far invested close to $2 million dollar, in designing the crocodile model farms, setting up incubators, heated hatchling ponds, generator and tool storage, water reservoir, skinning and salting bays, cold room, housing, office a frame of lodges and an entertainment area.

Currently, the farm has only 3,000 crocodiles, on average the company earns about $50,000 (Shs95 million) per year from the little exports.
Every year around the months of February-March slaughters the two and half year old crocodiles for its lower skin which is exported to South Korea.

The meat is sold to some local restaurants licensed by UWA to sell game meat like Quality Cuts, Sam’s restaurant and some other Chinese Restaurants in Kampala city.

“Each kilogramme of crocodile meat at the open market costs Shs30, 000-40, 000,” Mr Chris Katsigazi another director said.

The investors said this could have been a bigger investment, unfortunately, this company, which enjoys the monopoly up to date, has failed to meet the required international CITES quota.

This means that for the last 15 years, when the company started exporting, the country has annually been losing close to one billion shillings worth of export revenue for failure to meet this requirement.

Kamugira said; “We would be able to meet the quota if we were able to increase on our production. But the eggs we collect from the wild under an arrangement with Uganda Wildlife Authority are not enough to sustain the quota”.

He added; “Despite the abundant eggs, which are sometimes eaten up by predators, UWA only allows us to collect 1,200 eggs, less than the 4,000 we request for annually”.

The directors of the company say that Uganda is only able to export about 300 skins yet the potential to export more is there.

Mr Katsigazi said, the company needs to have at least 10,000 crocodiles to be able to meet the CITES requirement. During the tour of the farm located 75 km off Kampala at Katebo-Buwama on the shores of Lake Victoria, Mr Chris
He said for each egg, whether normal or stale, the company pays UWA $1.

However, UWA Public Relations Manager, Ms Lillian Nsubuga in an interview about the fewer eggs they permit Uganda Crocs’ to collect said; “UWA is here to protect the sources from being depleted. Apart from this company collecting the crocs eggs, there other predators which eat the eggs, that’s why we limit the numbers”.

Ms Nsubuga further said that UWA allowed Uganda Crocs to collect 2,000 eggs but the company has always been under collecting.

Meanwhile Uganda Export Promotions Board (UEPB) together with the line ministry of trade has embarked on a campaign to see that the private businesses which are export oriented and serving a double purpose but facing challenges in their daily running are helped.

Future plans
The company’s future plan is to build breeding ponds and accumulating on the existing breeding stock, setting up a tannery so as to export processed skins as opposed to wet salted skins,” Kamugira said.

The other activities that the company wants to expand into are the game meat processing and packing for both the local and international market, plus cage fish farming both for feeding the animals and for human consumption.

The company has started trials to turn the place into a tourism site, besides crocodile farming, with activities like, hiking and fishing, water cruises and providing accommodation and catering facilities. The tourism site has been branded as ‘Camp Crocs Resort’.

The camp situated on the shores of Lake Victoria, is a 45 minutes boat ride to the Ssese Islands and a 25 minutes drive from the Uganda Equator.

Ms Carol Kamugira the Resort Manager said; “This place is well placed for tourist purposes. Therefore the plans to build more bandas for accommodation of tourists and of water sports and activities are underway”.

Education facilities for school groups, parties that visit us,
To conserve the species of Wild crocodile (Uganda Crocs Ltd returns a percentage to the
Ms Kamugira said they have in the process of constructing a website www.ugandacrocs.com which will not only increase the export of the crocodile products but also significantly contribute to tourism.

The investment of Uganda Crocs Ltd has already made significant contribution to both the local community and Uganda generally.

“The company has created close to 100 jobs and as expansion of the business is done more will be employed,” Mr Katsigazi said.

He said large numbers of workers are employed to help right from the collection of eggs from the wild, maintenance of the farm right to the labour intensive slaughtering and skinning. “With the tannery and meat processing plants in place, more employment will be created”.

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