Sustainability key to Namibia’s 10-year tourism strategy

The strategies address con­straints and the stra­tegic pos­i­tion­ing of tour­ism as a key eco­nom­ic and devel­op­ment sec­tor in Nam­i­bia. Tour­ism stake­hold­ers at nation­al, region­al and loc­al levels were con­sul­ted about the two strategies since work star­ted on them in 2011. And the United Nations World Tour­ism Organ­iz­a­tion reviewed drafts in 2014.

Xin­hua repor­ted on Octo­ber 21, 2016 that Nam­i­bi­a’s MET would launch the two nation­al tour­ism strategies five days later … (!?) … Wheth­er or not the strategies were offi­cially launched this week or last year, the MET’s Chief PR Officer Romeo Muy­unda said in Octo­ber that the key object­ive of the strategies is to trans­form Nam­i­bia into the most com­pet­it­ive tour­ism des­tin­a­tion in Africa.

“In addi­tion, these two strategies aim for the tour­ism industry to become the second most import­ant con­trib­ut­or to the Nam­i­bi­an eco­nomy, both in terms of con­tri­bu­tions to GDP as well as earn­ings in for­eign rev­en­ue,” he added.

Cur­rently the core eco­nom­ic sec­tors in Nam­i­bia are agri­cul­ture (meat­pack­ing, fish pro­cessing, dairy products) and min­ing (dia­monds, lead, zinc, tin, sil­ver, tung­sten, urani­um, cop­per), accord­ing to the US Cent­ral Intel­li­gence Agency’s World Fact­book.

Live­stock and meat­pack­ing are import­ant indus­tries in Nam­i­bia. Source: NTB website

Sustainability a guiding principle

The Nation­al Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Growth & Devel­op­ment Strategy 2016 – 2026 (page 17) refers to a “focus on sus­tain­ab­il­ity” as one of six guid­ing principles.

“Sus­tain­ab­il­ity and envir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion are enshrined in the Nam­i­bi­an Con­sti­tu­tion (Art­icle 5) and this strategy will be imple­men­ted with the utmost respect to these com­mit­ments. All tour­ism devel­op­ment must be socially, envir­on­ment­ally and eco­nom­ic­ally sus­tain­able, and sus­tain or enhance the cul­ture, her­it­age, geo­graph­ic­al char­ac­ter and well-being of all Namibians.”

The strategy’s vis­ion state­ment for tour­ism (page 24) also incor­por­ates sustainability:

“The vis­ion for tour­ism in Nam­i­bia is for a grow­ing, vig­or­ous and dynam­ic eco­nom­ic sec­tor that brings social, eco­lo­gic­al and eco­nom­ic bene­fits to all Nam­i­bi­ans, not­ably through the gen­er­a­tion of jobs and incomes. Tour­ism in Nam­i­bia will con­trib­ute to rur­al devel­op­ment and eco­nom­ic growth via the sus­tain­able use of nat­ur­al resources. Fur­ther­more, Nam­i­bia will be a role mod­el in the con­ser­va­tion of bio­lo­gic­al diversity, envir­on­ment­al man­age­ment and tour­ism development.”

A council and a committee

The MET did indeed appoint a Nation­al Tour­ism Com­pet­it­ive­ness Advis­ory Coun­cil (NTCAC) and Inter-Min­is­teri­al Com­mit­tee on Tour­ism Devel­op­ment (ICTD) this week.

These are called for in the Nation­al Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Growth & Devel­op­ment Strategy 2016 – 2026 under Stra­tegic Inter­ven­tion 2 (page 28).

The NTCAC will advise gov­ern­ment on tour­ism busi­ness and invest­ment mat­ters, includ­ing chal­lenges hinder­ing tour­ism growth. It com­prises 32 mem­bers selec­ted from vari­ous gov­ern­ment agen­cies and non-gov­ern­ment­al organ­isa­tions, such as Nam­i­bia Wild­life Resorts, the Nam­i­bia Train­ing Author­ity, Nam­i­bia Uni­ver­sity of Sci­ence & Tech­no­logy and the Tour Guides Asso­ci­ation of Namibia.

The ICTD, with 34 mem­bers selec­ted from 18 min­is­tries and two gov­ern­ment agen­cies, will serve as an inter­me­di­ary between the pub­lic sec­tor, min­is­tries and vari­ous agen­cies to har­mon­ise dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ment policies that impact on tour­ism. ICTD mem­bers were selec­ted from the Min­istry of Home Affairs & Immig­ra­tion; Min­istry of Inform­a­tion & Com­mu­nic­a­tion Tech­no­logy; the Nation­al Plan­ning Com­mis­sion and the Min­istry of Labour, Indus­tri­al Rela­tions & Employ­ment Creation.

All mem­bers of both bod­ies will serve for two years.

Envir­on­ment & Tour­ism Min­is­ter Pohamba Shifeta said Nam­i­bia has lim­ited resources which should be used wisely to attain sol­id social and eco­nom­ic return on investments.

“We want to be sure that we spend our money well,” he said.

A focused DMO

Under Stra­tegic Inter­ven­tion 3 of the Nation­al Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Growth & Devel­op­ment Strategy 2016 – 2026 (page 29), the Nam­i­bia Tour­ism Board (NTB) will focus on mar­ket­ing, pro­mo­tions, and research:

“In line with inter­na­tion­al best prac­tices, the Nam­i­bia Tour­ism Board will be restruc­tured to ensure that its sole func­tion is on des­tin­a­tion mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tion, with a prop­erly resourced research func­tion. Its reg­u­lat­ory, grad­ing and train­ing func­tions will either be returned to the Dir­ect­or­ate of Tour­ism and Gam­ing or reside with­in a sep­ar­ate ded­ic­ated agency.”

(Without know­ing any of the spe­cif­ic details, this blog endorses this inter­ven­tion. Often­times tour­ism author­it­ies are tasked with a con­fus­ing mix­ture of respons­ib­il­it­ies, which can be reflec­ted in their web­sites — a messy mix­ture of con­sumer-ori­ented, busi­ness-ori­ented, and gov­ern­ment-ori­ented con­tent try­ing to serve every­one and sat­is­fy­ing none.)

Nam­i­bia Tour­ism Board is now more focused on mar­ket­ing. Per­haps it knows sex sells. Source: NTB website

Potential for “goodness”

Oth­er areas of tour­is­m’s poten­tial for “good­ness” are dealt with in the Nation­al Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Growth & Devel­op­ment Strategy 2016 – 2026, includ­ing:

• Stra­tegic Inter­ven­tion 9: Ensure con­ser­va­tion remains a key USP
• Stra­tegic Inter­ven­tion 14: Cla­ri­fy rules and reg­u­la­tions around voluntourism
• Stra­tegic Inter­ven­tion 16: Cre­ate tour­ism clusters to pro­mote region­al tour­ism development
• Stra­tegic Inter­ven­tion 17: Integ­rate NGOs and con­servan­cies into the busi­ness inform­a­tion chain
• Stra­tegic Inter­ven­tion 20: Ensure the com­pet­it­ive­ness of com­mun­al conservancies
• Stra­tegic Inter­ven­tion 22: Estab­lish a new com­munity-based tour­ism reser­va­tion system
• Stra­tegic Inter­ven­tion 41: Cre­ate envir­on­ment­al aware­ness and education
• Stra­tegic Inter­ven­tion 44: Ensure the pro­tec­tion and pre­ser­va­tion of Namibia’s cul­tur­al heritage
• Stra­tegic Inter­ven­tion 45: Ensure that Namibia’s industry is con­serving energy and water wherever possible

Down­load the strategies for yourself.

Downloads

These large PDF files are hos­ted by Nam­i­bi­a’s MET (not this web­site) so links may break and access may be with­drawn at any time:

‘Nation­al Policy on Tour­ism for Nam­i­bia 2008’

‘Nation­al Tour­ism Invest­ment Pro­mo­tion & Pro­file Strategy 2016 – 2026’

‘Nation­al Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Group & Devel­op­ment Strategy 2016 – 2026’