mountain gorillas. Tourism is a major source of income for Uganda. Photo | Reuters
The view from the windswept clifftop is sweepingly gorgeous. Even in the blur that the early morning mist brings, Lake Mutanda and the Virunga ranges have never looked more aesthetically pleasing. For just one night, a quirky lodge that squats atop a hill overlooking the lake and ranges will open its doors to retired footballers who once wore FC Barcelona’s strip.
When a light aircraft carrying the high-profile guests taxies to a halt at a tiny airfield, Bwindi is no longer shrouded in mist. The sun is shining as the spiritual home of mountain gorillas prepares to let its visitors start touring Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. The treasure trove in the forest is mountain gorillas. Something of a dying breed, there are just 800 or so of them left in the world, with Bwindi contributing half that number.
Before going gorilla trekking, Bwindi’s newest rock star tourists will let their hair down at Chameleon Hill Lodge. To get to the quirky lodge, the former Barça players will travel in light brown Land Cruisers tailored to take the body blows and East African safari poses. Journeying to Chameleon Hill Lodge is not for the faint-hearted. A long windy pothole-ridden road backdropped by a huge cliff drop is certain to give violent lurches that make butterflies wobble in the tummy. It gets more frightening if or when it pours with rain, which is often the case in that part of the world.
The brilliant sunshine shafting through the skylight has left the dirt road sunbaked. This essentially means the ride to, first, Chameleon Hill Lodge, and, later, the impenetrable forest is devoid of incidents or scares for that matter. In the impenetrable forest, the former Barcelona players trek with such a fierce acceleration, showing—if there was any doubt—that they haven’t forfeited the fitness that saw them distinguish themselves in many football cathedrals during their heyday.
As climbs that are unforgiving to the hamstrings and knee-savaging descents are made, a strong burst of remembrance of Edgar Davids’ tireless box-to-box forays easily spring to one’s mind. After successfully tracking three silverbacks following a punishing four-hour trek, Davids wants more. The park ranger had earlier mentioned—rather offhandedly—that elephants delicately ply the same route the retired footballers have trekked. He even showed them the excreta of a baby elephant. Quite a gargantuan pile! Davids now wants to exhaust the possibility of trailing the elephants. Not today, the guide smiles.
Pandemic blow
That was back in December of 2015, a little over four years before a tiny pathogen rattled Uganda’s tourism sector. Shortly before Covid-19 reared its ugly head, the United Nations World Tourism Organisation put tourist arrivals across the globe in 2019 at an unprecedented 1.4 billion. That same year a dataset from Uganda’s Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities ministry offered a measure of the distance the country had travelled. Visitor arrivals in Uganda were captured at an impressive 1,542,620, a high-water mark.
As well as putting estimated tourism jobs at risk worldwide, the pandemic plummeted inbound tourism the world over by as much as 72 percent in 2021. Uganda could only muster 512,945 visitor arrivals that year.
A satellite account report that the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos) jointly worked on and released with the Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities ministry last November shows that the country is starting to profit yet again from the world being consumed by wanderlust. In 2022, inbound tourism improved by 58.8 percent as the number of visitor arrivals improved to 814,508.
“Out of the 814,508 visitor arrivals, 41,683 (7.7 percent) were excursionists (non-resident visitors arriving and leaving Uganda the same day) while 772,825 (92.3 percent) were tourists (overnight visitors),” the satellite account report discloses.
While the high-water mark of 2019 was still some way off, and, adds the report, “tourists to Uganda stayed for an average of 7.4 nights in 2022 compared to 8.3 nights in 2019”, the green shoots of recovery have not been lost upon many. The inbound visitors’ purposes of visit ranged from reconnecting with friends and relatives (38.2 percent), business (36.5 percent), and leisure (11.7 percent).
“Business tourists stayed for at least a week while those that came to visit their relatives and friends stayed longer than a week on average 9.7 nights,” the report further reveals.
Forex earner
Most importantly, tourism exports in 2022 had a sense that was indispensable to their trade: the sense of raising money. Shs2.5 trillion was put together from tourism receipts. Still, the Shs4.5 trillion mustered pre-pandemic in 2019 is cited warily—perhaps defensively—as it remains pretty much unchallenged.
Pared to its most elemental dimensions, a weighty study on tourism expenditure and motivation shows that inbound visitors spent twice more on food and beverage-serving services in 2019 (Shs1 trillion) than in 2022 (Shs499 billion).
“The three main products in inbound tourism expenditure were accommodation (39.3 percent), food and beverage (19.4 percent) and passenger transport (13.8 percent) with a combined share of 72.5 percent in 2022,” the satellite account report notes, adding, “This means 72.5 cents of every dollar/shilling by inbound visitors is spent on accommodation, food and transport. The main products of inbound tourism in 2022 remained consistent with those in 2019.”
While measuring up to the pre-pandemic high-water mark is proving staggeringly difficult, there is more reason to pull out all the stops. According to the National Labour Force Survey, 2021, the number of people in Uganda who are in tourism employment total 610,806. This represents a 5.7 percent share of the country’s total employment.
The passenger transport industry (inclusive of road, air, rail, and water as the former Barça players who visited in 2015 can attest) accounts for 68.7 percent of the tourism employment. The foods and beverage industry (21.8 percent), the cultural services industry (5.2 percent), accommodation services for visitors industry (3.5 percent), as well as travel agencies and other reservation industries (0.7 percent) follow in that order.
Evidently, while the pandemic took the wind out of its sails, the tourism sector looks set to remain the country’s forex tour de force. With the country’s mounting public debt gobbling its forex reserves, the tourism sector will have to go into overdrive. Just as Davids did during his well-decorated playing career.
