Africa Safari Travel News

By Deborah Allen Nakawojwa

Tours Uganda news reporter
Kampala Uganda

Six five-star hotels are to be constructed in six national parks to boost tourism, the tourism state minister, Serapio Rukundo, has said.

Kidepo Valley National Park, Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Mgahinga Gorilla National Park, Murchison Falls National Park, Lake Mburo National Park and Queen Elizabeth National Park would get the hotels.

“We are in negotiations with investors like Kempinski Hotels, Hilton Hotels, Sheraton Hotels and Serena Hotels to construct these hotels by 2012,” Rukundo said while launching the Pearl of Africa Tree at Akright Kakungulu Satellite City on Entebbe Road.

He said more hotels were needed near game parks to accommodate tourists.
“For our tourists to face nature in its virginity, see animals like climbing lions and relax, accommodation within the parks has to be improved.”

Tourism is one of the fastest growing industries in Uganda, with earnings expected to reach $500m (about sh820b) annually.
Last year, over 770,000 people visited Uganda. They included businesspeople, conference attendants, cross border tourists and participants at the Commonwealth summit.

Urban planning state minister, Urban Tibamanya, said the Government was looking for investors to partner with Kampala slum-dwellers to develop the slums.

He said that investors would construct storeyed buildings and share floors with the slum-dwellers

Anatoli Kamugisha, the Akright managing director, asked the Government to enact strong laws to protect rare tree species like the Pearl of Africa Tree.

Deborah Allen Nakawojwa

Tours uganda news reporter
Kampala Uganda 

Emirates air lines is planning to end delays by closing the boarding gate 15 minute before taking off, a statement revealed. “The 15minutes before departure gate closure is in consideration of customers who arrive on time for their flights.

It will allow aircraft to take off as scheduled as it takes about 15 minutes to locate and off load gabbage of missing or late customers”. Mohamed H Matter, Emirates senior vice president for airport services in Dubai, explained. The new policy, which is also aimed at ensuring customers do not miss connecting flight, took effect on June 22. Latecomers to the boarding gate will be left behind.

Passengers in transit who arrive late into Dubai will be helped by airport staff through formalities to make onward connections. Customers will be reminded about the policy when they check in. written reminders have been placed on e-tickets, tend cards in lounges, restaurants ad smoking areas.

By Deborah Allen Nakawojwa

Tours Uganda news reporter
Kampala Uganda

The Association of Uganda Tour Operators has elected Henry Oketcho as its new chairperson. Oketcho works with Explore Uganda Safaris. He replaces Mel Gormley, who headed the association for the last two years. Gormley owns Classic Africa Safaris.

Jovino Akika, the former tourism state minister conducted the elections at the Kampala Serena Hotel. Akika is now the chairperson of the Uganda Tourist Association.

Cam Mcleay of Adrift Adventure Company will deputise Oketcho, while Barbra Vanhelleputte of Asyanut Safaris was retained as the secretary. Jane Goldring, a former committee member, was elected the new treasurer.

“We hope the new committee will unite tour operators and bring on board all of them to fight for a major cause,” said Geoffrey Baluku, the public relations officer.

The operators have been pulling strings with the Uganda Wildlife Authority, accusing it of monopolizing gorilla track permits in Nkuringo in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.

Baluku said the new team would ensure transparency in the distribution of the permits to clients, as well as working with UWA on issues that affect the tourism industry.

By Deborah Allen Nakawojwa
Tours Uganda  news reporter
Kampala Uganda

Female chimpanzees are hungry for sex with as many males as possible, and keep their mouths shut about it to boost their chances of luring the top chimps, a British university said yesterday.

Scientists at the University of St. Andrews studied the copulation calls of sounds they sometimes make during mating of female chimpanzees in Uganda to find out more about what they mean.

The Scottish institution’s team concluded that female chimps sometimes keep quiet during sex so their female rivals do not find out what they have been up to.

Evolutionary psychologists Simon Townsend and Klaus Zuberbuhler studied chimp behavior in Uganda’s Budongo Forest over 16 months.

The team established that female chimpanzees hide their sexual activity when high-ranking females were nearby, perhaps in a bid to reduce competition for good quality males. This could prevent higher-ranking female chimpanzees from turning on them.

They also found the females produced more copulation calls when high-ranking males were around to attract them to have sex. The scientists believe that having sex with several males causes confusion among the male chimpanzees as to which one sired the offspring. The males are therefore less likely to kill any babies that might be theirs.

The study found no evidence that males were competing to have sex with females after they produced copulation calls, and no link between a female’s fertility and her use of the calls.

“Chimpanzee females adjusted their calling behavior in flexible ways, potentially to avoid aggression from other females and possibly to secure future benefits from the socially important males,” the study said, “Competition between females can be dangerously high in wild chimpanzees. These females use their copulation calls in highly tactical ways to minimize the risks associated with such competition.”

Zimbabwe lost US$7 million in tourism revenue from the Japanese market following the review of the country’s security risk by Tokyo, the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) chief executive officer, Karikoga Kaseke has said.

Kaseke said Zimbabwe lost about 4 000 tourists who had planned to visit Victoria Falls between 15 April and 31 May 2008.

The loss translates to about 12 000 bed nights as the average stay per visitor is three nights. “If this is translated to tourism receipts, including earnings from food and beverages, activities such as those common in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe lost about US$7 million from the Japanese market alone in those 45 days,” Kaseke said. “This is a sad situation indeed, but as the tourism promotion organ of the government we will do everything in our power to redress the situation.”

In April, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs raised the risk level from the previous Level One to Level Two. Japan classifies destinations in four levels in terms of security risk. Level One, being the lowest, is not prohibitive but merely requires Japanese nationals who visit destinations in that category to exercise due caution while they travel.

Level Two requires Japanese to consider the necessity of their travel and is prohibitive.

Once a destination has been classified in Level Two all tour operators, travel agents and individual travelers are expected to cancel their travel arrangements to such destinations.

Level Three requires an outright cancellation of all travel to the affected destinations while Level Four requires the immediate evacuation of Japanese nationals from the destinations. Kaseke said during April and May, the country experienced group cancellations by tour operators from Japan who had planned group tours, not only to visit Zimbabwe but Southern Africa as a whole.

By   Deborah Allen

Hundreds of unmapped villages have been discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) rainforest, it has been revealed.

Those embarking on gap year travel to the DRC could now have the opportunity to visit these unexplored pockets of culture, which were previously not recorded on maps or satellite images.

It is thought that the country’s five-year war, which ended in 2003, prevented proper ordinance from being conducted in the thick forest areas.

According to Cath Long of the Rainforest Foundation, which is responsible for the latest effort to find unregistered villages, recognizing their existence is essential to their preservation from logging contracts.

She told the BBC: “In one of the sectors of the territory that the groups are mapping at the moment, there are something like 190 villages but on the official map there are about 30.” The rainforest could also be home to rare and protected wildlife such as mountain gorillas.

DRC has adopted the growing ecotourism industry as one method of preserving such species from extinction in places like Virunga National Park.

By Deborah Allen Nakawojwa 

The Rwanda Tourism Board is seen as the best example in sub-Saharan Africa of how to organize and improve tourism development and get a workable system off the ground. Talking the fact that Rwanda has been through a traumatizing history of the 1994 genocide that saw most the Rwandese people die others being displaced, it goes without saying that Rwanda has picked the pieces from that history and now its doing well compared to Uganda that has at least been stable for some time now!

Representatives of the newly established Ugandan Tourism Board were in Kigali of recent to meet with the RTB. Chairman of UTB, Roni Madhvani, said that in although Uganda tourism is doing well and actually the fastest growing activity in country, Rwanda tourism is slightly better than Uganda, and that is evidently explained in the recently held travel market in Berlin Germany where Rwanda displayed the most attractive stole and emerged the best in Africa.

The impressive achievements in Rwanda inspired them to meet, see and share what had been achieved so far. He said that since Rwanda and Uganda had such diverse products and different markets, they could never be competition for each other. Roni told the press in a media briefing that Rwanda is a showcase in Africa with regards to infrastructure, encouraging policies and products.

Ms Grace Mbabazi of the Ugandan Ministry of Tourism, Trade & Industry told the media that four years ago they had received just over 100 000 visitors. Last year arrivals had increased to approximately 516 000 providing 35% of total foreign earnings for the country.

In his welcoming address, Ms Rosette Rugamba said that although tourism was an ever-changing industry, the goal was the same throughout Africa: to reduce poverty and create jobs. “It is an honour that you chose to come to Rwanda on this mission. African co-operation and partnerships for the advancement of the continent’s economy and the reduction of poverty is the goal of all African countries.”

African governments are now realizing the importance of tourism for job creation and are committed to developing policies to increase human-capacity building. Rwanda is willing to share information on licensing, grading, levy systems, how to collect the levies, how to enforce the policies and how to find those who are not paying their dues. In order to see to it that tourism in east Africa grows as desired.

By

   Deborah Allen Nakawojwa

Tourism in Uganda has dropped by up to 30 percent since post-election violence in neighboring Kenya rocked the region, tourism officials have reported.

“The numbers of tourists have gone down by 20 to 30 percent,” Edwin Muzahura, spokesman for the Uganda Tourist Board, told the reporters.

According to the board, tourism is the fastest-growing sector in Uganda and more than half a million arrivals in 2007 injected $375-million into the economy.

The country is a popular tourist destination thanks to its gorillas, chimpanzee sanctuaries and waterfalls. “We have suffered a lot Uganda is largely marketed through Kenya,” Muzahura said.

Foreign tour operators often organize holiday packages that include both countries, beginning on Kenya’s beaches and ending in Uganda’s gorilla-inhabited forests.

But Kenya’s December 27 elections, which saw incumbent President Mwai Kibaki re-elected in a race opposition leader Raila Odinga alleged was rigged, broke into country wide riots and tribal revenge killings.

Images of hacked Kenyans and women and children burnt alive scared off visitors during east Africa’s peak tourism season.

Close to 800 people were killed and a quarter of a million uprooted by Kenya’s political crisis. With all this, Wealthy Europeans stay away. Several European countries, including Britain and France, have issued travel advisories discouraging their citizens from non-essential travel to Kenya, and foreign travel insurance companies have pulled coverage from the area.

“When this crisis started in Kenya, tourists started asking themselves whether they should come to east Africa,” said Lillian Nsubuga, spokesperson for the Uganda Wildlife Authority. Several Uganda-Kenya packages were cancelled.

“People are now thinking to come straight to Uganda. Kenya is not an option anymore for the foreseeable future.”

But tourists who start visiting Uganda again will do so at a higher cost.

Looting and rogue checkpoints along trade routes from Kampala to the Kenyan port of Mombasa have delayed the import of fuel into landlocked Uganda and driven up fuel prices.

We’re already an expensive destination, and it was not feasible to take people on safaris at all unless they were willing to pay a fortune.

While fuel is now more readily available in Uganda, still-high prices are negatively affecting generator-run eco-lodges and game drive vehicles that rely on an increasingly unreliable fuel supply.

By: Deborah Allen Nakawojwa

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