UNWTO AND UNDP SUPPORT UGANDA’S TOURISM INDUSTRY THROUGH NEW PROJECT
(Posted 07th December 2013)
The United Nation World Tourism Organization, in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme are engaged in a new one year programme benefitting the Uganda Tourism Board and the private sector alike. Emphasis is on the sustainability of tourism businesses and the value they create vis a vis helping to bring benefits to those rural communities where many of the country’s tourism attractions are located. Towards that end has the project now commenced a series of consultative workshops across the country to mobilize the private sector and throw their support behind the initiative. ‘The project aims to empower the poor to increase benefits from the tourism industry and improve their livelihoods through access to labour and markets, and increased opportunities for decent work and income’ states on the of project pamphlets.
In Kampala did company representatives but also association executives, led by Herbert Byaruhanga, President of the Uganda Tourism Association, attend the most recent workshop this week where case studies from key tourism regions like the East, the West and the South West were presented and discussed of how they can be copied and adopted by other regions of Uganda.
The project is financed through respective grants and hopes to have by the end of 2014 accomplished the following three key targets, namely to establish and operationalize up to 30 new business linkages, to develop 6 innovative pro-poor business models and finally to build added capacity for 6 tourism associations/institutions and up to 100 SME’s across the country. Watch this space.
