Uganda’s Cultural sites hold its Tourism potential
In the West Nile region of Uganda, lays monuments and Cultural sites that need to be rehabilitated so as to attract Tourists and generate job opportunities for local residents as custodians, caretakers, and guides.
This region is often overlooked by travelers and certainly not on the map for mainstream tourism yet, there fore it needs to be worked upon and marketed as a tourism destination.
A source in the Ministry of Tourism’s department for museums, monuments, and antiquities was in the same connection also quoted as having said that the West Nile alone had over 40 such identified sites already, including Fort Dufile of the legendary Emin Pasha, erected by him when he was on his expedition to this part of Uganda as he traveled up the river Nile.
Cultural and heritage tourism is as yet not much exploited in Uganda but could become a mainstream activity for visitors keen to learn more about the kingdoms, chiefdoms, and their ancient customs and ways of life, still often practiced like it was decades and centuries ago in the remote rural areas of the country.
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Jackie
Two Elephants killed in Semliki wildlife reserve
Poachers who crossed to Toro-Semliki wildlife reserve in western Uganda from Congo killed two elephants.
Sources said one of the poachers was intercepted with elephant ivory and was being held by the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces. The sources added that the elephants were butchered on Wednesday and the carcasses were discovered the following day.
“It is unusual for poachers to cross over from the DR Congo and kill endangered species undetected,” the source said.
Contrary to the statement, the acting head of the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) John Makombo, in a separate interview said the poacher who is being held is a Ugandan from Ntoroko and not a Congolese.
“UWA is working with security operatives to identify the ownership of the gun recovered from the poacher,” he said. “It is possible that he was working for someone from Congo which has a porous border. Many poachers prefer working in Congo and use Uganda as a trafficking route.”
He also said UWA will share information with a watchdog called the Monitoring of the Illegal Killing of Elephants and the Lusaka Task Agreement Force, which polices wildlife crime. Uganda has 5,000 elephants and the number is increasing after the population had slumped in the 1970s due to political and civil unrest.
Poachers killed a lot of wildlife including elephants, which are key tourist attractions. The black and white rhinos were driven into extinction and few year back have been re introduced to Uganda at Ziiwa sanctuary.
Elephants are categorised as endangered species, according to the World Conservation Union, meaning that they are likely to disappear if nothing is done to protect them and their habitats. Locally, a kilo of ivory goes for sh120, 000. The value in the Far East is about $600.
Although last week’s incident is the first case of killing elephants in Semliki, elephants in Queen Elizabeth National Park cross over to Congo.
“This is an ecological system and that is why Uganda and the DR Congo collaborate in managing the animals,” said Okello Obongo, the chief park warden.
“Large mammals do not know boundaries and the most important thing is to protect them irrespective of where they are,” said Obongo.
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More Top Uganda Wildlife Authority Bosses Suspended
Three more top officials at the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) have been suspended to pave way for an audit report.
Eunice Mahoro, the director of tourism development, Joseph Tibaijuka, the acting executive director, and Olive Kyampaire, the partnership coordinator. This brings to five the number of UWA officials on suspension.
Moses Mapesa, the executive director, and Sam Mwandha, the director for conservation, were sent on forced leave earlier this week. Two others resigned last month.
Asked why he was sending Tibaijuka away days after naming him acting executive director, Dr. Boysier Ouma Muballe, the UWA chairperson, said: "Tibaijuka is the director of finance and it was not appropriate for him to be there acting as the executive director." "We had to send him away until investigations are over in the next three to four weeks. This could be followed by a commission of inquiry. The audit report will guide us on what steps to take," Muballe added.
He named Mark Kamanzi as the new acting executive director. Muballe vowed that no stone would be left unturned until what he described as chaos at UWA is sorted out.
He said he had camped at Uganda Wildlife Authority for the last two months to ensure that the organisation is run efficiently. Muballe noted that UWA had been hit by irregular creation of departments and mismanagement of funds, among other problems.
However, sources within UWA said confusion and tension had crept into the authority as staff at the headquarters fear that they might also be affected. The sources added that Muballe's intervention had created more problems than it was intended to solve. UWA was set up by the wildlife Act in 1996 and manages 10 national parks, 12 wildlife reserves and 14 wildlife sanctuaries, covering 10% of the country.
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Jackie
Uganda Tourism Board (UTB) Gets New Home
The Uganda Tourism Board (UTB), the Tourism promotion arm of the country, has got a new home.
Formerly located in the basement of Impala House on Kimathi Avenue, UTB has moved to its new offices located at Windsor Crescent, in Kampala's posh Kololo suburb.
Located in about an acre of land, the plush spacious office is being seen as a step ahead by UTB to take the staggering but potential sector that has kept lagging behind her East African Counterparts.
The Uganda Tourism Board's Executive Director, Mr Cuthbert Baguma, told East African Business Week last week that the spacious offices are ideal and convenient for Tourism.
Baguma, who is only just four months in office, said the former office at Kimathi Avenue was inadequate for marketing.
“Fundamentally, you can't talk about marketing and promotion without image, and one of the key ingredients of image is location in terms of accessibility, proximity and convenience,” Baguma said.
"The previous office space we were occupying at Impala was grossly inadequate for the creation of a prime marketing agency like UTB as the tourism marketing arm of Uganda."
Apart from its offices at Garden City, Baguma said UTB plans to open another office in a prime location in the central business district to ease accessibility and convenience for improved customer care and service delivery.
In 1907 Uganda was visited by Winston Churchill. His discriminating and perceptive analysis of what Uganda has to offer was recorded in "My African Journey", where he wrote "Uganda is truly the pearl of Africa".
Blessed with unique attractions, beauty, its well-earned reputation for hospitality, modesty and friendliness, Uganda seems to be slowly losing its tourism grounds. With the trials of independence and civil war now long past, Uganda has once again opened its doors to tourists.
Over the past three years, Uganda's Ministry of Tourism, through its associated agencies the Uganda Tourism Board and the Uganda Wildlife Authority are sowing the seeds of a brand new conservation-based form of sustainable tourism.
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Jackie
Black back attack kills an Infant
The absentee of the dominant silverback Isabukuru in a gorilla group, gave a chance to black back Kubaha to attack the group members in which a seven-month-old infant Agatako was killed, while his mother Bukima, who was carrying him. Kubaha was aggressive all morning towards all the females in his group.
“Most of the time, Kubaha displayed with chest beats and plant smashing and was tight-lipped and strut-standing towards group members. He was obviously nervous and uptight,” said Joel Glick, the Karisoke Research Center’s interim Gorilla Program coordinator, who was collecting data in Isabukuru’s group at the time.
It is unclear whether Kubaha, who is 11 years old and has not yet reached sexual maturity, was nervous about having to lead the females, or whether he was trying to attract their attention by showing off his strength, or both.
With tension mounting and females occasionally responding to his aggressions with gestures of appeasement or aggression, Kubaha launched a fierce attack against Bukima, who was behind a thick bush on the edge of the mountain. Her loud screams alerted the other females, who ran towards Kubaha. It was then, at noon, that Agatako, who was clinging to his mother, lost his life. However, the view was obscured for observers, so they could not establish beyond any doubt whether Kubaha directly targeted him, or whether he died in the interaction between the aggressor and his mother. Neither Bukima nor the other females sustained any injuries.
By the time Glick reached the group at the bottom of the mountain, just four minutes after Kubaha’s attack, Bukima was carrying her dead infant away from the other gorillas. His tiny body was covered in blood. When she finally laid him on the ground, every individual in the group approached him with curiosity. Bukima paced nervously, as though trying to decide whether to look for Isabukuru’s trail or watch over her dead infant.
This would not, however, be the end of the drama for the day. Kubaha next approached the dead body and started to display with it, as some of the females screamed.
“It was absolutely horrible,” said Glick, visibly shaken. “Kubaha flung the body in the air several times, let it drop to the ground, and then dragged it all over the place. He even chest-beat while holding the body in one hand. There was blood everywhere.”
This lasted for 15 minutes, after which Kubaha finally set down Agatako’s body. It was later recovered by the veterinarians, whose preliminary report indicated “deep puncture wounds,” most likely from canine teeth. This would indicate that Kubaha indeed bit Agatako.
A short while afterward, silverback Isabukuru returned to the gorilla group, unaware of what had happened in his absence. He had spent the morning some 600 meters away, trailing another gorilla group in the vicinity, according to the trackers who followed him. He stared in the direction he had come from and displayed three times, and then all was quiet, with no further aggressions.
Isabukuru himself was responsible for the only other case of presumed intra-group infanticide ever recorded when he was still a black back in Pablo’s group, in December 2006. Soon after he killed one Infant there, he left together with a few females and started the new group that is named after him.
Agatako was born on January 26. He was healthy, and Bukima was taking good care of him. He received his name - which means “ornament” in the local Kinyarwandan language - during the Kwita Izina ceremony last month. He was Bukima’s third offspring. Her previous infants all died as well.
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Tourists and workers would need 1 visa for 5 East African countries
The Five East African nations want to collapse their borders so that foreigners will need only one visa to travel to any of the five nations.
The proposal is part of an effort to forge Uganda, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania into a single market and increase investment in the region said the Kenya Immigration Minister Otieno Kajwang.
Negotiations are at an advanced stage, he added. The European Union's 25-nation zone of open frontiers is being used as a model, and negotiations will conclude soon.
Citizens of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda do not need visas to travel within their economic bloc, the East African Community, which on Thursday officially began operating as a single market with one set of regulations. Each country, however, still has to change a wide range of laws including labor, taxation and immigration to conform to the protocol.
On Friday, Kenya waived all work permit requirements for East Africans, who will only need to register with the immigration department as a formality, Kajwang said.
"We want to show by example that what we have agreed on we are implementing, and this will create a lot of goodwill," Kajwang said. He noted that Rwanda in late 2007 eliminated work permit requirements for all citizens of the community.
He cautioned, however, that there are still difficulties ahead in fully implementing the East African Community's Common Market Protocol, such as resistance from bureaucrats. It took five years to negotiate the protocol and at times talks stalled because of fears that individual countries would lose their sovereignty or that Kenya's better established businesses would dominate the region.
If all goes as planed, there will be easy movement of Tourists with in the East Africa Region, leading to the development of the Tourism Industry in the Region.
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Jackie