The World Forum on Gastronomy Tourism will return to Donostia-San Sebastian in Spain (5-7 October) to focus on how tourism can foster rural development, build economic resilience, and preserve cultural heritage.
Zimbabwe's Healthy Tourism Future Starts With Healthy Local Communities
25.08.2023 - 14:46 / skift.com / Colin Nagy / Africa
One of the enduring lessons for tourism as the world emerges from the pandemic is that it really all starts from the ground up — with communities, healthy communities that build the foundation to create a thriving tourism trade.
But the obstacles to nurturing those communities are many, as Zimbabwe shows us, for example, and a reason why the work of people like Tendai Nhunzwi is so essential for the southern Africa country, home to countless wildlife sanctuaries and natural wonders, including the Victoria Falls. Rebuilding the tourism economy, which saw a 28 percent decline in employment from 2019 to 2020 to 128,000, will start locally.
Yet, food shortages in Africa are expected to be even worse this year, according to the United Nations.
It’s a perfect storm of inflation, a global pandemic, as well as a war in Ukraine affecting grain supply. Extreme weather and climate change furthers the situation, and economic pressure on farmers means they sometimes lack the seeds, fertilizer, and other necessary elements to plant and harvest next year.
The IMF estimates that staple food prices in sub-Saharan Africa rose by an average of 24 percent between 2020 and 2022, the most since the 2008 global financial crisis. According to the report, This is commensurate to an 8.5 percent rise in the cost of a typical food consumption basket (beyond generalized price increases).
The situation is more dire in Zimbabwe, which in addition to the external factors, has suffered from political instability, corruption, and some of the most rampant inflation in the world. The government isn’t able to provide all of the services it needs, so a non-profit, the Malilangwe Trust, seeks to fill in some of the gaps. It describes itself as “a wholly Zimbabwean non-profit organization dedicated to environmental conservation and committed to the development of lives in our local communities.”
The Trust and Nhunzwi work hand in hand with local hospitality and tourism.
Safari brand Singita’s Pamushana Lodge property is the ecotourism partner of the Malilangwe Trust. Though the two are operationally and fiscally independent of each other, the common thread is ecotourism to support conservation. The relationship is it symbiotic: without the work of the Trust, wildlife populations would not thrive and there wouldn’t be a safari tourism product as a result. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship: tourism dollars from well-heeled travelers support the community work. The community work and conservation makes for a more dynamic and thriving ecosystem for people to visit.
Nhunzwi, as general manager of the human resources and neighbor outreach program for the Malilangwe Trust, is on the frontlines of many things to assist the local population:
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