 A sleeping giant |
The unexploited treasures of Tanzania's tourism include Africa's highest mountain Kilimanjaro, beautiful preserved beaches of Zanzibar islands, a historical slave caravan route town of Bagamoyo, and Ujiji town in the western region of Kagera, where two famous Scottish missionaries Dr David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley met in the 1870s. These tourism pearls have remained fairly unknown to the western world for decades, apart from Kilimanjaro adventures memorised by Hemingway and thousand and one night stories of Zanzibar harems. For those interested in safaris, Tanzania offers one of the most extensive and diversified wildlife conservation and protection areas, which cover about 25 percent of the total land of the country with 12 unique national parks administrated by TANAPA , 17 game reserves, 50 game controlled areas, a conservation area, and a marine park along the eastern coastline. Furthermore, what makes Tanzania unique are the endangered species like giant turtles, black rhinos and colobus monkeys; much of their existence owing to the clean, unpolluted and untouched nature.
If promoted properly with the infrastructure developments satisfying the world class standards, experts estimate that Tanzania's tourism industry has a potential of about 650bn dollars. Unique tourist attractions in Tanzania also include the over three million years old Ngorongoro Crater, and the nearby Olduvai Gorge, which is said to be the original home of modern man, and one of the world's most exclusive holiday resort Mnemba Island, just off the eastern coast of Zanzibar Islands. Tradition wise, one should not forget over 100 tribes living in the country with their distinctive customs, societies and culture.
Such unique features have made the tourism sector one of the fastest growing areas of Tanzania's economy being currently the second largest foreign currency earner after the agricultural sector. Its GDP contribution accounts for 14 percent compared to agriculture's 34 percent in 1999. Statistics show that in 1990 153,000 tourists visited the country bringing along with them over 65m dollars. The number has been increasing steadily up to 482,331 in 1998 with an earning of 570m dollars, which is double the number but more than seven times the earning because of high class tourists who have been visiting the country in recent years. Honorable Zakia Hamdani Meghji Minister of Natural Resources and Tourism thinks a bright future for the sector is looming with a target of 1 millions tourists by the end of this year.
Commendable progress made in tourism in recent years is partly due to the establishment of Tanzania Tourist Board (TTB) in 1993 with a priority objective of promoting the country's unknown tourist potentials to prospective clients and general liberalisation of the industry. These developments have helped to advertise Tanzania's tourist potentials abroad as the TTB has taken part in international trade fairs, prepared brochures and other marketing strategies to promote the country.
| Liberalisation has also enabled rapid development of a private tour and travel agencies and operators, and air charter companies, which have eased transport problems in the country. Further, Tanzania's fast developing private sector is investing heavily in infrastructure facilities such as Dar es Salaam's over 300 rooms world class Sheraton Hotel, New Africa Hotel, White Sands Hotel and many others which have just come up in recent days.
Liberalisation of the transport industry in general has meant that Tanzania's southern regions of Lindi and Mtwara, which have been isolated from the rest of the country for many years especially during the rainy season due to bad roads, can now be accessed. An other important improvement worth of mentioning is an urgent need to connect the official capital Dodoma better to the rest of the country. Private passenger air carrier companies such as Eagle Air and Precission Air, have joined state owned Air Tanzania Corporation in offering services this year and many more are due to follow.
But while Tanzania's tourism industry is thus being revived at a relatively fast speed, competition from neighbours such as Kenya and Uganda is growing. Some western nations such as the United States has pledged to support Tanzania to realise bumper earnings through the tourism sector and one of the significant developments ever made was the signing of the open skies agreement."Tanzania was the first African country to sign an Open Skies Agreement with the United States. Tanzania is also on the list of countries that we are doing something with under our Safe Skies Initiative," US Ambassador to Tanzania Mr Charles Richard Stith said.
As a member of East African Community Tanzania is bound to open its borders to Kenya's well established tourism industry and allow tourists to extend their journeys from Masai Mara past Gologonja pass into the northern tourist enclave, a move which stakeholders in Dar es Salaam are strongly against. Like Tanzanian manufacturers, tour operators, travel agents and tourism authorities are also concerned about Kenya's supremacy in the sector which will usurp the local market from them. Tanzania's Natural Resources and Tourism Minister Zakia Hamdani Meghji expressed her opinion on this "As a message, I would also like to add that although Tanzania is part of East Africa and EAC, we should work together and be honest about our own tourist attractions, we have had problems as far as promotion of Mount Kilimanjaro is concerned,". For many years of promotion, Kenya has been luring tourists through a phrase, `Come to Kenya, see Mount Kilimanjaro,' which has made many western tourists think that Africa's highest mountain at over 5,000 metres above sea level, is on Kenyan territory. |
