Tanzania’s Grand Plan Rolled To Unpack Kagera Tourism Potentials

By Adonis Byemelwa

Over 1,000 artists, government leaders, and many other tourism stakeholders are set to make a tour of diverse Kagera sceneries in a fresh bid to unearth the untold tales of abundant natural resources under the Grand Kagera Tour project.

The Tourism development project is scheduled to take place in February 2024 when several tourist attractions will be visited, thereafter the Kagera tourism stakeholders’ meeting will be held under the Regional Commissioner Fatma Mwassa. The meeting will brainstorm and chart out the way forward on the means of promoting an enabling environment for tourism in the region in which much focus will be placed on scaling up the national income.

The Grand Kagera Tour is a private venture aimed at partnering with the government to promote tourism in the Kagera Region, with a major focus being placed on ensuring the little-known tourist attractions are opened up before the world of the leisure industry.

The founder and coordinator of the Grand Kagera Tour Project, Miss Good hope Ntimba, told journalists recently that she had spent a considerable of time and a colossal amount of funds researching the diverse tourist attractions in the seven districts of the Kagera region, explaining that she placed much weight in ensuring the exotic attractions alongside cultural tourism are made known by both members of the public and visitors from across the world.

“I did an independent survey and realized that there are quite a lot of unlocked potentials in Kagera Region. Many districts are naturally endowed with waterfalls, and wonderful caverns, let alone the kinds of foodstuff which keep the identity of Kagera natives. We are set to make incredible changes in the world of the leisure industry, thanks to the cooperation I receive from friends on a pro bono basis,” said Miss Ntimba in an interview.

She noted that while doing the survey she found that many of the tourist attractions are short of sustainable investment, signaling a need to partner with the Ministry of Tourism that will see funds set to modernize infrastructure, alongside advertising the God-endowed natural resources to scale up the economy.

“I am one of the artists born in Kagera Region.  The failure to have some exotic sceneries and honeypots known by tourists has been boggling my mind. This region receives minuscule tourists compared to other places which have fewer attractions than ours. We have been blessed with wonderful rivers, waterfalls, caves, traditional foodstuff, and down-warping formed Lake Victoria, but little effort has been made to make these sceneries known. This is why I find myself indebted to use my artistic skills to bring considerable transformations,” the self-appointed tourism ambassador said.

She explained that the Grand Kagera Tour is determined to open the gateway to tourism, hoping that many other partners will join hands to propel the economic project, insisting that she will not relent in a fight against poverty in the regions, which, she thinks, can be alleviated through investing in tourism.

A survey on the recent social economic studies carried out in Tanzania all point to the phenomenon of poverty faced by the Kagera Region, for a couple of years now, has been steering through; a social dimension.  it is the social decay and its concomitant social vices with a bearing on the generation gap as a long-term consequence of HIV-AIDS.

The pandemic devastated the region in the 1980s through to the 1990s, when it was still unknown. It was the period during which the region registered, among other sad facts, the highest orphanage rates in the whole country, and little was, as still is, known of its long-term consequences.

On an economic dimension, the situation was heightened further by a series of other catastrophic happenings that followed thereafter, affecting negatively the household income dynamics.

Sadly still, the region’s per capita income level is the lowest and its trend pointing downwards, calling for rescue interventions in an accelerated fashion.

However, irrespective of all of the challenges mentioned above, the Kagera Region in North Western Tanzania is one of the very few Regions endowed with abundant natural resources, a very rich history of resilient people as well and stunningly diverse ecosystems dotted with biodiversity hot spots.

The Region’s climatic weather supports the production of a wide range of both; annual and perennial crops, largely in very dense and diverse agroforestry farming systems featuring coffee, avocado, and other agroforestry trees; banana plantains, small-ruminants and the famous long and big horned “Ankole” cattle.

The region also boasts of a dense network of rivers – including the Kagera and Ngono rivers – and their tributaries pouring their waters either into Lake Lweru / Nyanza, Burigi, or Ikimba.

In between, are the incredibly biodiversity-rich wet-marshy lands stretching the green valleys used to serve as natural boundaries of the ancient and former “Buhaya Bukama-doms’” territories, which, are more or less represented by the present-day seven districts comprising the Kagera Region and some huge chunks of territories which have been integrated to Geita and Kigoma Regions.

Kagera Region is, in addition, competitively advantaged in terms of its geographical location. It peculiarly borders four of the seven East-Arica member states. Positioned at an almost equal distance from the four Capital Cities of Dodoma, Kampala, Kigali, and Bujumbura, the region is a potential East African economic and business hub.

As an area of connectivity, the region links well the newly Gazetted National Parks of Rumanyika-Ibanda, Burigi-Chato, and Rubondo, with the neighboring wildlife sanctuaries in Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi.

Mutually, all of the factors mentioned above, not only ascertain to both, the public and private sectors the existing potential of Kagera region as a lucrative tourist destination but also underlines the urgency of intervening now, by unlocking these potentials to address the widely spread income poverty challenges in the region.

A Tanzania artists board member, Mohamed Sekamba said the Grand Kagera Tourism project will set the center stage for companies and hoteliers to increase their income, challenging the transport corporations to swiftly grab the anticipated opportunities.

“When visitors start swarming the region, they will need reliable means of transport. Tour operators should now think of investing in the business. Tourism pays off if we are serious. Let us not sleep on the jobs. The time is now to boost an individual and national economy,” said Mr. Sekamba.

In 2021, the contribution of the tourism sector to Tanzania’s economy slightly increased to six percent, up from 5.7 percent in 2020. That year, the sector felt the most the impact of the coronavirus (Covid-190 pandemic. Despite the improvement, tourism contribution to Tanzania’s GDP remained below the level previous to the health crisis, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.