Tourism has played a significant role in maintaining economic, social, and cultural peace.
From an African perspective, I shall justify this using anecdotal evidence, citing experiences mainly closer to my native East Africa.
Rwanda, for example, has become an icon from a hotspot of genocide to anchoring the country’s growth and development in the tourism sector.
The annual gorilla naming ceremony ‘Kwita Zina’ has attracted several celebrities globally who have become ambassadors for the country, from Bill Gates to Ellen DeGeneres, impacting communities, rangers, and conservation efforts. Infrastructure and ICT have been carefully planned and linked to the tourism sector to diversify the economy.Â
The political leadership is aware of threats surrounding this fragile oasis of peace and has taken pragmatic steps to ensure that the country’s borders are secured from external threats.
As a reminder of the genocide past, the country has dedicated several sites to ‘dark tourism’, providing lessons for peace and reconciliation to tourists, pledging that never again should genocide happen again!
In 2006, when my native Uganda hosted the IIPT (International Institute of Peace Through Tourism) conference, I was privileged to guide Louis D’Amore, President of IIPT, and Juergen Steinmetz, CEO of eTurboNews on a tour of Uganda.
The itinerary included visiting the country’s north, fresh from twenty years of insurgency. The two visitors were perhaps the first to visit in peace since the end of the conflict.
After a long ride on the back of a pickup truck and under heavily armed escort, the car stopped in the middle of a pineapple field, and who appeared was the rebel general. Steinmetz and D’Amore were introduced to two senior military generals who took their visitors to farms and communities, trading swords for plowshares.
Steinmetz said: Wow, these pineapples were sweeter than at home in Hawaii.
The armed escort and a trickle of villagers returning to their gardens were the only evidence of conflict a year before.
Hitherto, previous visits to IDP ( Internally Displaced Persons) Camps were made by volunteers. American Hollywood star Nicholas Cage and current UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also visited these camps.
The visitors then met and made new friends before proceeding to Murchison Falls National Park, Bunyoro Kitara Kingdom, and Toro Kingdom before returning to Kampala, the capital.
Louis spent the last few nights in Uganda at Makerere University, where he was thrilled to learn of one of the University hostels named after past UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, who had perished in an air crash in 1961 while on a peace mission in the Congo.
In 1886, during the era of British colonialism in Uganda, several Christian converts were condemned to death by the reigning king of the Buganda kingdom, Kabaka Mwanga, at Namugongo, located East of the future capital city Kampala.
The Namugongo Shrine has become a major Basilica, attracting at least three million pilgrims for annual celebrations every 3rd June and three Popes since it was opened by Pope Paul VI in 1969.
In 2016, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the scene of the daring Entebbe Raid by Israeli Commandos forty years before. Israeli hostages were rescued following a hijack of Air France and a subsequent battle with Ugandan soldiers at the Old Entebbe Airport, where the aircraft had been diverted.
In contrast, his visit was a mission of peace, which included some relatives of the hostages,
The site has since become a popular tourist landmark for Israeli tourists and a potential site for ‘birthright tourism ‘ for Jews.
In South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s prison cell in Robben Island, where he spent 27 years during the apartheid regime, is now a ‘Mecca’ for tourists.
It is a shame that in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the potential for tourism in the country, which is rich in diverse landscapes, vegetation, luxuriant Congo forest, and the mighty Congo River wildlife, apes and primates, is being curtailed by armed conflict has been fueled by ‘blood minerals since the exploits of king Leopold of Belgium in the late 19th century with ramifications for the region. The story is replicated in Sudan and several other African states, but with no end.
