East Africa’s tourism resources remain untapped despite vast potential

Arusha. The vast natural resources in the East African Community (EAC) bloc have not been fully tapped for tourism.

Visitors to the recently-held Tourism Expo said the world acclaimed attractions the region is endowed with do not match the number of visitors.

Richard Gafabusa, a lawmaker from the Uganda Parliament said joint efforts must be undertaken to promote the bloc jointly for tourism.

"EAC is endowed with a lot of resources that still remain largely untapped", he said at the Magereza grounds in Arusha where the Expo took place.

The annual fair was jointly organised by the Moshi-based Kilifair Promotion Company Limited in collaboration with the Tanzania Association of Tour Operators (Tato) and other stakeholders.

It attracted over 400 exhibitors from 12 African countries, 500 international and regional travel agents and a combined visitors estimated to be 8,000 for the three days.

The major tourist attractions in the EAC include the ice capped mountains; Kilimanjaro, Mt. Kenya and Mt. Ruwenzori, the Serengeti/Maasai Mara ecosystem and the coastal beaches.

Before the outbreak of Covid-19, the region used to receive about six million foreign tourists annually but dropped to about two million in 2020.

Mr. Gafabusa, however, decried failure by the partner states to collectively agree to market the region as a single tourist destination.

This, according to him, would have enabled the region to reap maximum economic value from the initiative by increasing the number of visitors.

Under the initiative, the EAC would become a single tourist area with a single tourist visa issued to travellers from abroad.

Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda have been using the single tourist visa for about a decade now while Tanzania and Burundi are yet to join the system.

Ugandan member to the East African Legislative Assembly (Eala) James Kakooza called for promotion of regional tourism through creating synergies among tourism associations in the region.

The Ugandan legislator underscored the importance of promoting local tourism through creating synergies among tourism associations in the region.

He said the Karibu Fair/Kilifair has enhanced the level of networking among the tourism stakeholders in the region in a bid to revive the sector recently hit by Covid.19.

When she opened the Expo, the minister for Natural Resources and Tourism Pindi Chana said although the tourism industry was badly hit by Covid-19, it was now recovering.

Statistics indicate that the number of visitors dropped from about 1.5 million in 2019 to slightly over 620,000 in 2020; the peak of the pandemic.

Last year, the visitors to the tourist sites increased to 922,992, a significant number of them being domestic tourists.

 Projections of the number of visitors for this year have not been revealed but the government still targets five million tourists in 2025.