The 4th International Institute of Peace through Tourism (IIPT) African Conference Coming to Uganda in May

Kampala, Uganda, will host the fourth International Institute of Peace through Tourism (IIPT) African Conference May 20-25, 2007.

“We anticipate that this will be our most important and successful African conference to date,” said Louis D’Amore, IIPT Founder and President. “We have spent the past year fostering relationships in support of the conference with the aim of not only debating its theme and goals – but to building partnerships that will act on them.”

The theme of the conference is “Building Strategic Alliances for Sustainable Tourism Development, Peace and Reconciliation on the African Continent.” Among the many goals of the conference is increasing public and government awareness of the role tourism plays in preserving the biodiversity of the African Continent.

According to the IIPT newsletter, the Conference will bring together senior African executives from both the public and private sectors of tourism, as well as NGOs, donor agencies, educators, policy makers, leading practitioners, entrepreneurs, future leaders of the industry, and senior representatives of related sectors including environment, culture and economic development.

The conference will include plenary sessions, workshops, an Educators Forum, a Youth Leadership Forum and a Traditional Leaders Forum, as well as pre-conference training workshops on selected topics.

For more information about the conference, visit iipt.org.

My very first post to this blog mentioned the this was coming. Now it is a reality.

Apolinari Tairo, from eTN Africa, reports that “Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda have launched a common marketing strategy at big international tourism fairs.” This is part of their effort to ” to market East Africa as a single package but with different and unique tourist heritages in each member state.”

The official start of this new campaign will coincide with the International Tourism Exhibition (ITB) in Berlin to be held in March of next year. There, East African tourist boards will present leaflets and banners featuring the regional tourist attractions and inter-state heritages.

In addition to this marketing campaign, the three countries have “also agreed on a common tourist visa and standardization of hotels and other tourist facilities in the region.”

According to Tairo, representatives from the regional tourist boards met at the recently-ended World Travel Market (WTM) in London, and “agreed to harmonize policies and strategies in the tourist sector in the East African Community (EAC) states to involve a broad spectrum of stakeholders.”

The managing director of the Tanzania Tourist Board (TTB) Peter Mwenguo told eTN Thursday, that they intend to “chat out plans to work out implementation of the EAC council of ministers directive requiring us to foster regional cooperation in tourism.”

Tairo adds, “Wildlife is the leading tourist attraction in East Africa, but each state has its own unique attractions including Mount Kilimanjaro, Ngorongoro Crater and Chimpanzee parks (Tanzania), the Maasai-Mara Game Reserve and the Indian Ocean beaches (Kenya) and gorilla heritage and natural scenery (Uganda).”

Thursday, Oct. 26, is World Tourism Day, and to celebrate Tanzania is opening a new tourist region of Kagera on the shores of Lake Victoria.

The Kagera region lies close to the equator (1 degree south) and has been rising as a tourist destination in Tanzania. The region includes diverse cultural and historical attractions and rich wildlife resources.

Kagera also shares territorial borders with Rwanda and Uganda, with a large part of its area sharing Lake Victoria water resources, which, in turn, shares borders with Kenya and Uganda. Lake Victoria is the largest tropical lake in the world and the second largest freshwater lake on Earth.

The opening is part of a week-long tourism promotion, the inauguration of Kagera Annual Cultural Festival and the World Tourism Day. Activities will focus on poverty reduction strategies, contribution to reconciliation of people’s culture, economic benefits of tourism and environmental protection.

For more information, visit www.kagera.org/worldtourismday.htm.

When most people think of going on a vacation to Africa, the word “safari” comes up. For most, the whole point of a safari is to see the wildlife of the mysterious continent. However, as many of you know, and as I’m mentioned in other posts to this blog, that wildlife is not only getting smaller, but is, in some cases, in danger of disappearing altogether.

Thankfully, many African nations are realizing the importance their wildlife has for their economy and are starting to use tourism as a way of funding conservation efforts. Thus, eco-tourism, nature-based tourism that educates and interprets the natural environment for tourist and is ecologically sustainable, is growing in many African countries.

For a good overview of this topic, check out “Development of Africa’s eco-tourism” at www.traveldailynews.com/makeof.asp?central_id=1194&permanent_id=31.

TourismAfrica, to be held Sept. 10-15 in Geneva, is the first initiative focused solely on African tourism. The event, which gathers qualified African and International decision-makers from both private and public sectors, aims to foster the development of Africa’s tourism industry.

Two of the days, Sept. 14 and 15, will be dedicated to the importance of women in the development of African tourism. The World Association of Women Entrepreneurs is sponsoring the special days.

Some of the topics to be discussed during the congress include heritage preservation, sustainable development and tourism project development.

For more information, visit TourismAfrica’s official website at www.tourismafrica.com.