African Tourism projects: great potential or white elephants?

Not too many people are aware that Ghana has a very good game park, called Mole National Park, about two hours drive from Tamale in the north, which is in turn a short flight from Accra. Like many other African governments, Ghana's government has high hopes for earnings from tourism. Will it happen?

You can sign me up as a zealous booster of Ghana tourism. Mole National Park alone is amazing, as I hope some of these amateur photos convey.The scene from the ridge on which the hotel sits was breathtaking and full of game.

And we haven't even gotten to Ghana's more famous attractions, like Elmina Castle, or even its famously welcoming and courteous citizenry, or just traveling about anywhere in Ghana. My message is unambiguous: come to Ghana!

Unfortunately, not all tourists base their choice of destinations on my recommendations. The prima donnas among the tourist set are going to complain about the not-quite-luxury-class hotel at Mole, or the teeth-chattering ride over an unpaved road from Tamale. Or maybe they will still be whining about the hassles of getting a visa. Some of them might have been a little put off by the welcome sign at the airport, whose principle message seems to be that pedophiles should surrender to the police immediately. (I of course sympathize with whatever problem led to this sign, but calling the visitors perverts is not the conventional way to attract tourists.)

This is the problem with trying to make tourism a major source of revenue. You have to keep the spoiled brats happy from the moment they enter to the day they depart. This chain is only as strong as its weakest link: one bad experience and it scares off the tourist masses. It seems that a lot of tourism projects do not appreciate these realities. The successful large scale tourist earners create at least a welcoming airtight enclave like Cancun. This is asking a lot of a poor country, to make everything fully functional for visitors when even making the basic health system work is a (higher priority) struggle.

Plan B is to attract at least the true  travelers, to whom a hitch in the road is material for an entertaining story to tell their friends, not something to ruin your vacation. Ghana is already doing this with some success and could conceivably do more (the hotel at Mole, while not large, was at least full to capacity in mid-July). I don't know how large the traveler market is compared with the mass tourism market, but a rigorous survey of my family, friends, and acquaintances suggests it's non-trivial. Perhaps somebody has already done a study of these various tourist market segments (anybody know?) Bottom line is that I think Ghana does have considerable upside potential, but not at Cancun scale. And maybe they should take down the pedophile sign.

Should starving people be tourist attractions?

Senegalese entrepreneur Magatte Wade on the Huffington Post touched a raw nerve about condescension towards Africans. She noted that a tourism operator was marketing one of Jeff Sachs’ Millennium Villages (MVs) as a vacation destination and quoted from the brochure "Please do not give anything to the villagers -- no sweets.”

I decided to look more into the MV tourism project, not to pile on, but because I believe patronizing attitudes towards Africans is a BIG issue in aid. The web site gives this introduction:

The Millennium Village Tour is a unique experience that introduces the … poverty traps in south-eastern Rwanda and the successful intervention package of the UN Millennium Villages Project.

I agree with Wade that it is dehumanizing that the villagers are just exhibits for tourists teaching them about abstractions like “poverty traps,” and are also to be used as propaganda for the MVs’ “successful intervention.”

The brochure that bothered Wade really is cringe-inducing, including also this line:

Please do not eat or drink in public. Many people in Bugesera District are still suffering from malnutrition…

If the MV is so successful, why are people still starving? Instead of worrying about hiding their food, why don’t the tourists pitch in on some MV project that helps the starving get food and nutritional supplements?

The tourism company offering the Rwanda MV tour is called EOS Visions and is headed by some German professionals. They have country subsidiaries, and it was the Rwanda one (staffed by Rwandans) that offered the MV tour. There are some benefits for the villagers as the company advertises 70 percent profit sharing with the local community. Obviously, there were some good intentions here. It’s never easy to negotiate encounters between very rich and very poor people, and some might think that these quotes from a tourist project are a minor issue.

The real problem is that patronizing attitudes towards the African beneficiaries of the MVs follow naturally from the ideas that inspire the MVs – that the poor are helpless victims and it is up to foreigners with superior expertise and funds to rescue them. Condescension towards Africans is both offensive AND a sign of a counterproductive approach to development.

Try looking at the poor Rwandans living in the MV not as anonymous and interchangeable exhibits for a “poverty trap,” but as individuals who possess rights and human dignity just like us. Then we maybe we will understand that the most impressive, knowledgeable, and motivated soldiers in the war on poverty are usually poor individuals themselves.