How REGROW project is opening up ‘southern circuit’

WALKING THE TALK: BUILDING A PROSPEROUS TANZANIA

THE ‘Southern Circuit’ is opening up and the number of tourists’ arrivals is surging, thanks to the government’s initiatives under the umbrella of a Resilient Natural Resource Management for Tourism and Growth (REGROW) project.

President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s splendid tourism promotion job through the Royal Tour Film is also significantly paying dividends. The documentary is playing a great role in promoting and advertising the country as a preferred tourist destination, the ‘Southern Circuit’ inclusive.

Rich in diverse nature, including national parks, game reserves, thick forests, beaches, coral reef, ruins of Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara, the circuit can easily be termed as ‘The Land of Waterfalls’, thanks to its mountainous plateaus.

The Southern Circuit is the lifeline of the country. It is largely a water source and catchment area in Tanzania, hence significant for supporting the REGROW project, which among other things, seeks to strengthen the management of protected areas and promote nature-based tourism in Southern Tanzania.

In 2017, Tanzania received funding from the International Development Association (IDA), housed by the World Bank (WB) in the form of a 150 million US dollars (about 350bn/-) soft loan credit to finance the cost of the REGROW project. The implementation of a six-year project is geared towards transforming the tourism sector in the Southern Circuit.

According to the Acting Director General of the Tanzania Tourist Board (TTB), Mr Felix John, the project goal is to improve management of natural resources and tourism assets in priority areas of Southern Tanzania and to increase access to alternative livelihood activities for targeted communities.

The project objectives include strengthen management and improve infrastructure in priority protected areas, strengthen alternative livelihoods for targeted communities in proximity to the priority protected areas, strengthen landscape management and infrastructure investments in and upstream of the Ruaha National Park (RUNAPA) as well as the project management, institutional strengthening, quality assurance and control and monitoring and evaluation.

Part of the project activities is to improve protected areas’ infrastructure, strengthen management capacity and infrastructure maintenance of protected areas, strengthen Destination Southern Tanzania, improve the governance framework of conservation-related community-based initiatives and enhance alternative community livelihoods by improving economic opportunities and linking them with the conservation of wildlife and landscapes

It also seeks to improve skills development for locals to have access to jobs in tourism and conservation, assess and implement infrastructure measures to augment dry season flows to the RUNAPA, improve the efficiency of irrigation systems, catchment conservation activities in selected sub-basins and support the consensus-building process for land and water management and climate change adaptation in the Usangu plains.

Just in its mid-stage, the REGROW project has started to count the chicken, following massive improvement of tourism infrastructure such as roads, tourists bandas, entry gates, revenue collection centres, walking trails and airports to provide conducive environment for game drive, walking safaris, bird viewing, hunting and photo tourism.

With all such efforts, the government is now aware that it requires aggressive marketing strategy to attract more tourists to visit and explore the splendour of the Southern Circuit.

No wonder, TTB has come up with a new initiative dubbed Digital Marketing Command Centre (DMCC) that is geared towards reaching out to as many potential tourists as possible.

According to Mr John, the DMCC initiative has been accomplished through Covid -19 relief package. In the financial year, 2021/2022 the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism was  granted 90bn/-, which is equivalent to 6.9 per cent of the whole IMF loan of 1.3tri/- in emergency financial assistance to support Tanzania’s efforts in responding to the effects of Covid-19 pandemic.

The funds are being spent to improve various infrastructures under the TTB, Tanzania National Parks (TANAPA), Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority (TAWA), Tanzania Forest Service Agency (TFS) and Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI).

“Through DMCC, we are now promoting and advertising our tourist attractions in a much modern way and reaching out to a larger number of people across the globe in a short period of time.

“This is opposed to traditional marketing that required us to participate in various local and international tourism exhibitions, distributing brochures and fliers that also worked well in promoting and advertising our tourist attractions. With DMCC, we will surely be much more effective,” Mr John said.

“DMCC has the capacity to capture any sentiments which have been shared in the digital platform including online TVs. Anything that has been shared; you can track it with precision by 100 per cent. What is required is quality people and commitment so that you can operationalise the platform and get good results,” he said.

He insisted that it’s no surprise that digital marketing tools and channels are such a critical part of promoting the country’s tourists’ attractions.

“The sheer volume of data available to us means that marketing a product or service often requires innovative thinking: using cutting edge tools like social media, building interactive websites with mobile-friendly design is crucial and will make it easy for us to pull and attract a larger number of potential tourists,” he remarked.

He said Covid-19 had significantly affected the inflow of tourists but things are changing for the better coupled with several initiatives being made by the government.

He said in 2019, the country had received a total of 1,527,000 tourists, pumping into the coffers about 2.6 billion US dollars (about 5tri/-), but due to Covid-19 pandemic, the number dropped to 620,867 tourists in 2020, with earning also shrinking to 714.39 million US dollars.

“In 2021, we came up with several efforts to revive the tourism sector; we staged the first ever East African Community (EAC) Regional Tourism Expo in Arusha. We also made several efforts in close cooperation with the private sector and managed to boost the number of tourist arrivals from 620,867 to 922,000 and earnings also increased from 714.39 million US dollars to 1.31billion US dollars,” Mr John said.

He said by September 2022, the country had already registered 1,035,000 and it was expected by the end of 2022, the number could have gone up to 1,500,000, of which, Southern Circuit was also expected to have its fair share due to improved infrastructure. Mr John believes that the future is bright for the sector.