STAKEHOLDERS IN WEST NILE WANT DELIBERATE EFFORTS TO DEVELOP TOURISM SECTOR

West Nile region stakeholders in a group photo during a recently held Local Economic Development engagement at Hunters Nest Hotel in Arua city.
 
By Godwin Abedican
 
Arua City
 
Stake holders in West Nile are calling for deliberate efforts towards the development of the tourism sector in the region.
 
Tourism in West Nile remains with less attention paid to it and has left a number of potential tourism sites undeveloped making the region fail to realize income.
 
According to some leaders who were deliberating during a Local Economic development engagement for the local governments in the region, if intentional moves are taken towards the development of the sector, then local governments shall be at an advantage of championing local economic development.
 
According to Alfred Okuonzi, the district chairperson Arua there is need to move away from depending on the central government for funds yet there is an opportunity to raise funds locally through tourism.
 
“We are endowed with various resources which are underdeveloped and cannot finance us. We have waterfalls, forests, and the famous meeting point of the three countries “Saliya Musala” in Koboko, we have hills and rivers, we have elderly people in the villages that we could put in a museum and take care of. All these, people could pay to see. Resources from the central government that we depend on are dwindling and the dwindling resources are leading us to increasing debt margins in the country,” he said.

Meanwhile, Akim Jennifer, the Senior Commercial Officer Nebbi district says the district council needs to take keen interest in the local tourism sites available to raise funds.
 
“Key for us is to spearhead the issue of local tourism starting specifically with the smallest church in the world located on Biku hill.  We shall start by requesting our council to allocate some budget to work on the road that leads to that church so that we can start making collections from the visitors who flock that place. From our rough estimates, over one thousand visitors flock that church in month. Even if we just charge one thousand shillings we will be making a million in a month, and that is twelve million shillings in a year What if we say two thousand shillings per visitor?, that will mean 24 million shillings annually which will be good money for the council, something we aren’t doing currently,” Akin noted during an interview.
 
David Muswa, the District Commercial Officer Nebbi on his part regrets the loss of identity by the region which must be fully restored.
 
“I go back to challenge our minds. What are we known for as West Nile? What can attract the donors and investors from outside to relocate to our region? During those days when coffee and cotton were still very vibrant and in the hands of the producers through cooperatives, every time it’s a market season, you would see people flocking the region, buyers and sellers, peoples shops would be full and the producers were proud farmers something that gave us identity. But today, we can’t be identified with anything,” he narrated.
 
However, according to Fred Wathum, the Senior Tourism Officer Arua city unless local governments start direct funding for the tourism, the region can never achieve the sectors growth.
 
“In the West Nile Local Economic Development (LED) strategy, tourism is one of the areas identified to drive development in the region. But these areas that we are talking about for attractions are not worth taking visitors to. And when you recommend some of these places to a tour operator, at the end of the day you get disappointed. When you go to Miradua waterfalls in Maracha, you are going to see a tourist attraction and within ten minutes you would have finished what took you there and then the question is what next. At least when you go to Oluko, we have a restaurant and one can take not less than 30 minutes to have an experience of the place.”
 
“This therefore calls for mobilizing investments into the places that we call tourism attractions in the region and if we are to mobile these investments, I will therefore challenge us the local governments to put aside resources to have investment profiles for every local government,” Wathum said.
      
The tourism sector remains one of the most underdeveloped in west Nile with many potential sites while just like the country Uganda, the region also suffers inadequate private sector institutional and human resource capacity to initiate significant tourism development, Constrained by limited access to affordable credit financing for investment, like other sectors, weak market segmentation and targeted destination marketing.