Even with open EAC borders, there is so much more to do

Let me start by congratulating Rwanda for hosting a successful and entertaining African Nations Championship (CHAN 2016). Our neighbours the Democratic Republic of Congo were the deserved champions both on the pitch and off it. Although the home team didn’t make it to the final, Rwanda still won at the end of the day. The DRC fans had occupied almost all the hotel beds in the city making it a great moment for those in the tourism business. Our other neighbours Tanzania, clocked 100 days since President John Pombe Magufuli was sworn in as president at the beginning of November. In those 100 days he has made a clear effort to crack the whip on those who were comfortable with delivering poor services to the people. One area where Magufuli has already seen impressive results is tax collection. He waged a war on those evading tax and even offering them some kind of amnesty to come clean and start paying their dues. By December the tax authorities had beaten their target by 12 per cent. Last month I was in Tanzania and I managed to have a long chat with one of the businessmen there. My take from the chat was that the business class that had enjoyed favours and dodged taxes for years was getting a nasty wake up call. It was no longer business as usual. Overall I enjoyed my stay in Tanzania particularly my time at the pristine Selous Game Reserve. A game reserve so big it occupies an area bigger than what Rwanda and Burundi combined and yet not many know about it, including some Tanzanians. What this points to is that more needs to be done to exploit the tourism potential in the region. How can this be done one may ask. Well, I think we have to start by demystifying tourism. It is not this thing that should be done by white people from far lands wearing cargo pants and safari boots. It is something we need to sell to ourselves as well. My good friends at the East African Tourism Platform like Carmen Nibigira (Regional coordinator) now spend their lives thinking about how to sell East Africa as a destination that East Africans should embrace. They basically want you and me to see more of East Africa than anything else. Between February 3rd and 4th, they hosted a forum bringing together CEOs and Executive Directors of private sector tourism associations from the five EAC member states to brainstorm on what needs to be done in order to achieve that vision of East Africa as one tourism destination. I listened in on the discussions on the opportunities and challenges facing the sector and learnt a lot for example on how the tourism sector in Burundi is now nearly totally dead due to the political crisis. I learnt that the Kenyans have studied the tourism data and seen that many Ugandan and Rwandan tourists visit the country and are now more determined to attract more East Africans especially to their coastal towns. I learnt that the average spending of tourists to East Africa is highest in Uganda because there is more to spend on when it comes to entertainment than in other East African countries. The Tanzanian delegation acknowledged the fact that the country’s potential could disappear if poaching is not curbed. The participants agreed that as business people, they had to look beyond the differences that come with each country and instead forge ties around their strengths and find solutions to common problems. For example a Rwandan tour operator revealed the fact that he started sending his friends to Mombasa for holidays for free but the number grew that now he added it to his tour business. The key message that kept being drummed for the two days was that there is a need to shift lenses towards domestic and regional tourism because the East African market is there only waiting to be lured. Another million dollar question that emerged was whether East African tourism was ready for the East African. That question above may look like one that can be brushed off but if you consider the fact that most tourism facilities have for long been designed with the Europeans and Americans in mind then you see where I am going with this. At the end of the day more energy should be directed at common issues like policy regulations, product development and marketing, skills development and research. Clearly there is so much to do.

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Even with open EAC borders, there is so much more to do