It would be prudent to deploy different strategies to grow the tourism industry

Kenya’s natural location would be ideal for many would-be travellers. Of the few cities I have visited, Nairobi is one where you don’t need an air conditioner. The unusual mix of wildlife and admirable hospitality industry would attract any average tourist. PHOTO/FILE 

In Summary

• Other sectors such as banking, retail and infrastructure have generally improved despite recent increased (and ill-advised) transaction costs. The two sectors that have not really joined the party are agriculture and tourism.
• One discomforting thing about being a member of the Kenyan diaspora is the number of people who associate you and the country primarily with wildlife safaris and long-distance athletes.
• Safaris and athletics are certainly good brands but by their very nature, they may never increase our tourist arrivals. They also obscure important dimensions to tourism that have worked well elsewhere. This is where policy needs to change the most.

By Erick Komolo
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Kenya turned 50 with remarkable improvements on many fronts.

The population is burgeoning and provides a critical local market, levels of education are comparatively higher than those in many African countries, and organised groups such as the Kenya National Union of Teachers are the strongest in the continent.

Other sectors such as banking, retail and infrastructure have generally improved despite recent increased (and ill-advised) transaction costs.

The two sectors that have not really joined the party are agriculture and tourism. For the time being, I’ll concentrate on the latter. We have consistently under-achieved our tourist arrivals projections in the past 50 years.

NATURALLY ENDOWED

Kenya’s natural location would be ideal for many would-be travellers. Of the few cities I have visited, Nairobi is one where you don’t need an air conditioner. The unusual mix of wildlife and admirable hospitality industry would attract any average tourist.

The logical question then is why we have hardly attracted over a million tourists annually. There are equally complex questions surrounding the actual trickle-down benefits of tourism in addressing perennial social and racial inequities, but I pass that for now. My feeling is that we must take a second look at our tourism policy and implementation strategies.

One discomforting thing about being a member of the Kenyan diaspora is the number of people who associate you and the country primarily with wildlife safaris and long-distance athletes.

Safaris and athletics are certainly good brands but by their very nature, they may never increase our tourist arrivals. They also obscure important dimensions to tourism that have worked well elsewhere. This is where policy needs to change the most.

Our emphasis has been on casual and repetitive mentioning of the need for wildlife conservation and corresponding foreign exchange earnings. There’s a dearth of policy and strategy when it comes to personalising the industry and linking it with other sectors like academia.

Perhaps my experience may modestly explain this. Over the past three years, I have witnessed a pattern of increased spending in research and development by governments and industry across most advanced nations.

But most of these activities are still concentrated in the North and closely associated with the advanced and emerging economies like Brazil, Indonesia, India and South Africa.

A plausible explanation for this is that research and development projects, as with many aspects of life, often thrive on personalised interactions and networks. These are sometimes lifelong and trans-generational.

You really only want to collaborate with someone you can work with. Despite this obvious fact, nearly all researchers and participants in academia I have met easily confess their lack of partners and contacts within Africa’s academic scene.

Simply put, inevitable dimensions to tourism such as academic and sports conferences haven’t found sufficient policy attention. The growth in the number of universities hasn’t necessarily led to rigorous intellectual competition when it comes to knowledge generation.

DOMESTIC THEMES

To the contrary, most universities are still inward looking. Most organised conferences are rather localised with exhausted domestic themes.

This is precisely why proactive and outward-looking government policy on tourism is necessary. Both Malaysia and Thailand have phenomenal tourism industries compared to Kenya although we’re culturally not so distant. Comparatively, they also have highly educated populations.

But China’s is a slightly different story. While we’re readily fed with negative aspects of its statist policies, in practice, the Deng Xiaoping era created a breed of high-calibre intellectual community that drives its increasingly competitive universities.

China also implements aggressive funding schemes for its citizens in academia at home and abroad. The result is that these countries are increasingly popular destinations for reputable conferences and research collaborations.

Blended with its natural beauty, favourable all-round climate and advanced supporting sectors, Kenya can thrive too.