Bid to revive community tourism

Oliver Kazunga Senior Business Reporter
THE government in partnership with the African Development Bank has embarked on a programme to resuscitate community based tourism in rural areas countrywide. Tourism and Hospitality Industry Ministry’s acting deputy director, Elyson Chigerwe said revamping community based tourism was a major thrust of the government’s economic turnaround strategy.

He said before the economic meltdown around 2008, the country had over 200 community based tourism enterprises with less than 50 being functional of late.

“Our thrust as the government through the Ministry of Tourism and Hospitality Industry is to revive the CBTEs so that we eradicate poverty in line with one of the objectives of Zim-Asset.

“The resuscitation of the CBTEs will benefit local communities from which the projects exist through employment creation, and income generation,” said Chigerwe.

“AfDB is supporting us with funding to undertake a survey to assess the current state of CBTEs in the country. We’ve done the survey in other provinces of the country and as we speak our team is in Bulawayo for the survey.

“We’re only left with Midlands and Harare provinces to complete the survey.”

He said the revival of community based tourism was in line with the government policy and the Regional Tourism Organisation of Southern Africa (Retosa) that seeks to empower people through running tourism projects.

Chigerwe said a team from his ministry was already on the ground carrying out a survey to assess the present state of the CBTEs in all the provinces.

“After the survey, we’ll have to establish training needs for respective communities on tourism based projects so that people have technical skills for the successful development of the projects or enterprises,” he said without disclosing the amount injected by AfDB.

Chigerwe also said his ministry had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Japan International Co-operation Agency for technical skills support for the same initiative.

Tourism is one of the major economic mainstays in Zimbabwe contributing an average five percent to the national Gross Domestic Product.