It is a pleasure to be with you this morning and to represent His Excellency President Paul Kagame at this important forum. The President couldn’t join us today due to prior commitments, but sends his best wishes.
Rwanda has a proud culture of hospitality and welcoming people into our homes. Today, this culture is at the heart of our tourism promotion efforts as we welcome more than a million visitors every year. Tourism is now the country’s largest foreign exchange earner, bringing in more than US $340 million annually.
Like Rwanda, much of the continent’s tourism depends on our natural resources – from our parks and rivers, to our coastlines and wildlife. The sustainability of nature based tourism in Africa – all of which is based in sensitive and fragile ecosystems – is increasingly in competition with human activities.
Therefore we must innovate so that tourism, conservation and development go hand in hand. Technology and entrepreneurship play crucial roles in this process.
In Rwanda, we have taken a grass roots approach to managing the conservation needs of tourist sites because the communities surrounding our parks and lakes determine their health and have the most to gain from thriving natural resources.
We give 5% of all tourism revenue to the communities surrounding our national parks. This money is used to fund local priority projects such as schools and health centres.
To date, millions of dollars have been invested in 480 projects across country under the tourism revenue sharing scheme, contributing to the welfare of communities surrounding national parks.
One of our national parks, Nyungwe, is Africa’s oldest protected mountain rainforest. It supplies 70% of the country’s water resources and is now providing local communities with new sources of sustainable income. We are working with thousands of community members who live around the park to promote entrepreneurship and to establish businesses and cooperatives that are improving lives and protecting the park.
There are 15 bee keeping cooperatives made up of around 500 members who have established profitable businesses selling world-class honey.
More than 170 former poachers and illegal resource collectors who used to exploit the park through hunting, logging and mining have now joined hands to create farming cooperatives that provide fresh produce to hotels and local restaurants – taking advantage of the tourism value chain.
In addition, members of park maintenance cooperatives tend to the walking trails – rain, hail or shine. One of these cooperatives is made up of former poachers.
The economic and ecological imperative to protect our natural heritage is clear. But for tourism and conservation to be successful, we must innovate and foster this kind of local entrepreneurship so that community ownership, and direct benefits for local residents, are a core component of all tourism ventures.
In Rwanda, we have seen the impact that technology can have on helping to diversify our tourism experience offering.
This is essential because Africa cannot continue to reply so heavily on natural resource based tourism. We need to diversify. This includes cultural and historical tourism as well as religious and community based tourism.
One example is the website, Vayando. This online platform connects international travellers with local entrepreneurs for unique experiences – from pottery making and boxing to traditional fishing and basket weaving. These entrepreneurs receive 75% of the total amount of the experience.
This for-profit social enterprise is using the power of technology to help individuals in remote areas reach new clientele. As governments, we must create the doing business environment that fosters this kind of innovation through technology.
Rwanda aims to grow our tourism revenues by 25% every year. This ambitious target can only be reached if we harness the power of technology, innovate in how we offer experiences and foster local entrepreneurship in and around our tourism sites.
In doing so, we can conserve our natural resources, improve the visitor experience and boost economic development in our communities.
I look forward to welcoming all delegates to the 41st World Tourism Conference in Kigali in November so that you can experience Remarkable Rwanda for yourself.
Thank you for your kind attention.
