Tourism Benefiting Locals In Uganda

Tourism in Uganda has helped a lot in improving the lives of many Ugandans including in the rural areas. The number of tourist arrivals in Uganda has increased significantly over the years and this has translated into dollars for different people involved in the hospitality industry.

Tourism however remains a foreign concept to many Ugandans despite the benefits that it is providing to this Country. Very few Ugandans have visited the different national parks in Uganda. Although the size of the British Isle, Uganda has over 10 national parks in addition to other different game reserves and conservation areas.

About 125,203 tourists visited Uganda national parks in 2004; however by 2009 the number of tourists had increased tremendously to 145,000 arrivals.

Uganda’s tourism despite its great initial potential after independence was greatly affected by the dictatorial reign of Idd Amin in the 1970s. A large number of Uganda’s wildlife was decimated due to poaching and poor management of the wildlife.

Rhinos for instance were hunted to extinction in Uganda. This was partly due to superstition by the soldiers who believed that wearing a rhino horn made one invincible.

However also during the 1990s there was war in northern by the Lord’s Resistance Army - LRA as well as south western Uganda by the Allied Democratic Forces - ADF and media reports about these incidents negatively affected the country’s image.

One of the worst of these incidents was the massacre of tourists in Bwindi national park who had gone on a gorilla safari in 1999 by the ADF rebels. Gorilla tourism is the leading foreign exchange earner for Uganda’s tourism. Almost all Uganda tour packages have gorilla tour in Bwindi included in the itinerary.

The other notable incident was the killing of students from the Jimmy Sekasi Institute of catering and hospital by the LRA in 2001 in an area of Uganda’s largest national park – Murchison falls national park in northern Uganda.

In order to realize the goal of conservation, conservations have poverty alleviation as one of the key objectives of conservation of wildlife. Uganda Wildlife Authority has for years now made it a point in its revenue sharing program to ensure that 20% of the annual revenue collected from any national park goes back to the communities surrounding the national park or tour attraction.

In total there has been over $2 million that the Uganda Wildlife Authority has given back to the local communities in the national parks through their local governments and the money is often used to provide services to the community as well as start projects for the locals in the area.

There are over 30 districts found around Uganda’s national parks and protected areas. All these districts under their local government have identified projects under the revenue sharing scheme that the Uganda Wildlife Authority can partly finance.

These locals have identified projects such as constructions of classrooms, teachers’ houses, clinics, roads, irrigation schemes, community halls and centers etc.

In addition to this locals benefit from tourism activities directly, for instance the locals around Bwindi Impenetrable forest national park as well as Mountain Rwenzori national park earn more in a month than most civil servants earn in a year from being porters to the tourists when doing gorilla trekking and Rwenzori mountain climbing.