For us, by us
Mmegi Editor | Wednesday March 22, 2017 11:06
Khama’s arguments, which for most parts are defendable, include the fact that the ceilings used by the Finance ministry for budgetary allocations are archaic and do not recognise emerging threats such as climate change or the growing significance of the tourism sector to the national economy.
At the Ministry, fuel has run dry hampering anti-poaching patrols, while other recurrent expenditure items have similarly suffered. The development budget has equally been chopped, forcing the Ministry to defer or cancel certain projects beneficial to the industry.
The facts on the ground speak for themselves. The various industries under Khama’s Ministry employ more than 20,000 people directly and are the second largest contributor to foreign reserves after the mining sector. Tourism, travel and hospitality are fast growing sustainable industries, which have the added benefit of putting Botswana on the global stage thus drawing in investor interest into other sectors.
And yet, Khama’s arguments, for some, are hollow. The main reason many are unsympathetic to his Ministry’s cry for help, is the same reason many Batswana are generally indifferent to emerging issues in the tourism and environmental sector.
A dichotomy exists in the country where communities live in and around the natural resources tourists worldwide come to see here, but do not benefit directly from them.
As noted by Chobe MP recently, ordinary Batswana living in the tourism heartland of the North West do not directly feel the benefit of the billions of Pula flowing from the area in tourism revenues.
Most enterprises are owned by multi-national foreign enterprises and the value-adding processes there, from bookings to flights, are controlled outside the country.
The most villagers can look forward to is employment, which is sparse, and communal revenues via concessions under the Community Based Natural Resources Management programme.
Indeed, the likely impact your average villager can expect to feel from the tourism sector is an attack by the growing numbers of protected wildlife which, thanks to the Government’s focus, have chosen Botswana as a safe haven in a poaching-riddled region and continent. Even there, Khama’s Ministry has a large backlog on compensation for damage, injury and death, which does not help raise sympathies for him and his cause.
Clearly, more needs to be done to identify and remove the access barriers for Batswana in tourism, travel and hospitality, as well as the associated processes and value add on services.
More also needs to be done to clearly demonstrate to Batswana how the value built up in tourism activities actually impacts their lives, a story that needs to be told honestly and factually.
Debate is also needed around the issues of inclusion, which clearly haunt the tourism sector, as it is seen largely as a foreign white-owned space where citizen blacks are interlopers.
Today’s thought
“We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt