Frazer Potani, AfricaNews reporter inLilongwe, Malawi
A stout French-Canadian, Dominique Blanchard, 41, is on leave and decides visiting Malawi after being tipped by a friend at home [Canada] who had visited Malawi earlier that this southern African nation is rich in tourist attraction centres and heritage. Blanchard, a social scientist then decides to travel from his home town of Quebec situated about 480 Km from one of Canada's big cities, Montreal through connection flights to visit Malawi to explore the southern African state's beautiful sceneries and social heritage.
And through connection flights, Blanchard finds himself in the magnificent Kruger National Park in South Africa where he spends three days en route to Malawi.
Later, he jets into Malawi through Kamuzu International Airport (KIA) in Lilongwe where he is welcomed by smiling faces of local people including tourism and immigration authorities within the airport.
Some minutes later he hires a taxi after tourism personnel have handed to him some colourful leaflets and maps indicating Malawi’s vast attractive tourist destinations scattered across the country.
The Canadian is then dropped at his first destination, Lingadzi Inn before following morning, after a superb breakfast and checking out, leaving by bus for the lakeshore district of Mangochi over 300 Km from Lilongwe.
Upon arriving in Mangochi in the evening, Blanchard meets smiling fishermen, fishmongers and more.
He can even here, hear the sound of the beautiful and Africa’s third largest lake. Welcome to Lake Malawi!
The Canadian spends a night at one of the local rest houses within Mangochi town and, during his stay here, he notes that even ordinary rest houses within tourist attraction centres are also tourism-conscious!
The following morning Blanchard boards a bus for Monkey Bay a town within the same Mangochi District also on the shores of Lake Malawi.
Before reaching Monkey Bay, the Canadian, using some transport connections finds himself in one of Malawi’s tourist attractive centres on the shores of the lake and also the country’s smallest national park, the Lake Malawi National Park.
It is here where Blanchard meets a lot of fellow tourists from other corners of the world.
And when he enters the park, the visitor even meets orchards, green vegetation and some baboons here and there chasing each other.
And upon typically getting inside the park, the Canadian realizes that there are some villages both inside and surrounding it that seemed not to be affected in any way, a thing which even created a curiosity in his heart.
In fact Malawi’s Department of Parks and Wildlife under the Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife and Culture deliberately gave in to the mutual harmony between nature in the park and both people living within its surrounding including the visitors to advance social interaction.
This was taking into account that tourists do not come in Malawi just to visit tourist attraction centres and their treasures but also to identify how people live in the country and also get a stint of their heritage.
The department is even aware that some tourists would like, when they travel, learn more about the responsiveness of the community to nature conservation.
This was even meant to create a sense of ownership in the local communities surrounding the park.
To fulfill such objectives the department has been civic educating the local people on the importance of preserving wildlife and the communities have accepted without problems.
The department is unique in nature conservation since it is also a natural bank for some very beautiful fish species whose ornamental aquatic market abroad has put Malawi on the international scene.
Tourism, Wildlife and Culture Minister Daniel Liwimbi said Malawi has the potential to generate income through tourism for boosting economic growth if the sector is fully exploited than just relying on tobacco currently attracting lower prices on the market.
“Our country has many beautiful, tourist attraction sceneries. We also have 500 different types of fish called Mbuna [cichlids] at Lake Malawi National Park,” he said adding that these fish species are a great treasure to Malawi’s tourism sector.
As Malawi joined rest of the world commemorating ‘World Tourism Day’ recently according to the Malawi Investment Promotion Agency (MIPA) the country’s tourism sector continues to grow amidst global challenges such as high cost of travel, and local problems such as inadequate tourist
facilities.
Yes! Malawi is rich in beauty but her tourism continues to limp due to among other things, lack of direct flights into the country to bring more tourists, poor road network leading to tourist attraction centres as well as frequent electricity blackouts. Nonetheless, the potential for growth in tourism is enormous, especially in eco-tourism.
MIPA even challenges prospective investors from elsewhere that they may invest in some of Malawi’s unique areas of natural beauty around Lake Malawi, Mulanje mountain slopes, Nyika slopes and protected areas such as national parks and forest reserves, cultural and historical sites such as missionary graves and slave trade villages and specific investment projects include construction of hotels, lodges and camps.
On its part Euromonitor International, a world leader in strategy research for consumer markets established in 1972 says travel and tourism is expected to play an important role in the development of Malawi’s economy if fully boosted.
“Despite recession, the country will continue to lure tourists with its most striking natural beauty, having a diversity of features like mountains and Lake Malawi, as well as wildlife and parks. Government prioritization of travel and tourism and efforts to boost its development is expected to have a positive effect on the trend of inbound tourism in the future,” says the organization.
However, Euromonitor International adds that Malawi needs to look at critical areas for attaining growth and to also identify other growth drivers so as to maintain that tourism growth.
World Bank’s statistics on international tourism; number of arrivals in Malawi on the other hand indicate that they have been increasing.
The bank says for example the number of tourists arriving in Malawi was 755, 000 in 2009 up from 742, 000 in 2008 despite the on-going global financial crisis that has affected many countries including potential tourists on the globe.
Malawi’s own Department of Tourism report also reveals that the country has been generating income from tourists visiting the country and could solicit more if the sector is fully exploited.
The report indicates that in 2008, visitors to Malawi contributed about K60 billion to the national economy up from K45 billion in 2007 and each international visitor spent an average K84, 000 in 2008 up from K62, 000 in 2007.
The paper further disclose that Malawi tourism sector registered a higher growth rate of 12.02 percent as compared to the global average of 4.4 percent, while the rest of Africa experienced a slow down, of 5.9 percent from 8.1 percent in 2006.
The report says major source markets for Malawi visitors still remain neighbours namely Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia.
But it quickly adds that overseas markets which also account for most of the leisure tourism, the United Kingdom (UK) exhibited a stagnating growth while that from the United States of America (USA) and some European countries had declined.
One of the major key players in Malawi’s tourism and hospitality industry, Sunbird Tourism Ltd also member of Malawi Tourism Association (MTA) says it is not a secret that Malawi can register more economic benefits through tourism.
“But if we have to benefit from tourism as a country there is a need to invest more in the sector,” said Sunbird Tourism Ltd’s Director of Sales, Marketing and Communications Stan Phiri.
He said if for instance, MTA members would continue facing challenges instead of overcoming them with support from stakeholders including government Malawi’s tourism sector’s potential of contributing to the country’s mainly agriculture-dependent economy will remain fully unexploited.
Liwimbi admitted that Malawi’s tourism has to overcome some challenges to enable the country attract more travelers to contribute to the economy.
To boost tourism, the Minister therefore, said Malawi Government is through Private Public Partnership investing in the tourism sector in infrastructures such as hotels, resorts and other related tourism goods and services including grading the facilities to meet international standards at all levels.
“In return we will attract more tourists from all corners of the world to bring more forex in the country. This will boost our economy as well as help us eradicate poverty,” he said.
If Malawi’s Tourism is to stop limping and instead walking smoothly and fully contribute to the country’s economy it has to first overcome some challenges that were highlighted by Nelson Nsiku a lecturer in Economics at the University of Malawi Polytechnic in Blantyre, Malawi.
Nsiku also a member of several national associations and committees that contribute to the policy debate on economic planning and trade policy in Malawi alongside Sheila Kiratu an advocate of the High Court of Kenya and a trade and investment lawyer with research interests in sustainable development, climate change, energy and investment and also coordinator of the Trade Knowledge Network Southern Africa branch conducted a research on Malawi’s tourism which exposed the sector's potential and challenges.
The study revealed that the coming of visitors from elsewhere into Malawi was not automatic that the tiny southern African country would generate foreign currency from tourism for social-economic development.
“Tourism can either bring foreign exchange into Malawi or leak it out of the economy. Prior to the liberalization of the financial sector, the Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) kept track of all foreign investment as the central point through which overseas investors moved their investments. However, the situation now is different in that any commercial bank can handle such foreign exchange transactions,” said Nsiku and Kiratu adding that similarly, foreign currencies can move out of the country through the same commercial banks.
“It is the monitoring of such inflows and outflows that poses a real challenge. To date, there is no specific data estimating leakages,” said Nsiku and Kiratu.
The two added that it is estimated that in Malawi the private sector has more foreign reserves than the central bank has at its disposal to meaningfully regulate foreign currency market.
Nsiku and Kiratu further said challenge of foreign currency leakages in Malawi is exacerbated by other social problems including the consequence of the tourist explosion the world over as well as illegal activities such as prostitution and dealing in drugs.
“In Malawi, some tourism businesses rely on the number of women visiting their premises,” they said adding that Malawi needs to do more if tourism is to contribute to the country’s social-economic development.
Nsiku and Kiratu further tipped authorities in Malawi that if the country is to realize benefits from tourism sector to contribute to poverty reduction they should regard the sector as more than just an economic activity.
"It [tourism] is, in essence, a massive interaction of people demanding a wide range of services, facilities and inputs that generate opportunities and challenges for the Malawian government. For this reason, it is necessary to manage the growth of the sector and to have clear guidelines to ensure that growth brought about through new investment is compatible with national and sectoral objectives,” they explained.
The two researchers also suggested that if Malawi is to make a sound social economic contribution to the economy to eradicate poverty government should stimulate tourism growth, the sector should be private sector driven and supportive of community involvement and vice versa.
“Tourism should even have the potential of employment creation in a gender responsive manner and be environmentally responsible and sustainable,” said Nsiku and Kiratu.
The two further recommended that policy makers in Malawi should create an environment whereby Malawians should become tourists within their country themselves (by offering affordable goods and services in the country’s tourism sector which are currently beyond the purchasing power of locals) than just anticipating foreigners to come in the country to contribute to the economy.
“Most domestic visitors to tourism facilities come from the urban areas of Blantyre and Lilongwe. In addition, investment in tourism has been criticized for exacerbating societal problems: the destruction of social patterns, for instance, child abuse, poor labour conditions and the domination of European investors are not unusual mostly in the tourist attraction areas like Mangochi and Cape Maclear. In extreme cases, there is no respect for local societies and cultural values,” they said.
Nsiku and Kiratu also emphasized that the sustainable development and management of tourism in Malawi requires responsible behaviour from private tourism companies.
“Most tourism operators simply do not want to talk about their social responsibilities. The disclosure of any information that may indicate their level of profitability is seen as making themselves vulnerable to competition and the tax collector,” they said adding that Malawi has considerable potential to develop the tourism sector.
“The sector was gradually taking off and the contribution of travel and tourism to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Malawi was 5.9 per cent in 2008, but with the slump in the world economy it was expected to be 3.5 percent in 2009,” they said adding, “Indeed, inbound tourism to Malawi has experienced steady growth in recent years”
The two researchers however, disclosed that while the number of tourists visiting Malawi have been increasing, the majority of them-65 per cent of tourist arrivals were from African countries, mainly Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
“Arrivals from Europe accounted for an estimated 16 per cent, with most coming from the United Kingdom and Ireland. The majority of tourists come from South Africa and countries bordering Malawi, with all trends pointing upwards,” they said.
Nsiku and Kiratu added that while in fact, others have referred to this overall upward trend as a positive development, the Malawi Tourism Association (MTA) (an organization promoting interests of key players in the country’s tourism sector) warns of overly simplistic analysis of this pattern, and prefers to look at the composition of the trends.
“The MTA’s argument refers generally to the definition of a tourist. However, the following generalizations are plausible: visitors from Zambia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe are mostly visiting friends/relatives because of the cultural and historical ties between Malawi and these countries,” said the dual.
The two researchers singled out many Zimbabweans who were for instance at the peak of their country’s social-economic meltdown under 'Uncle Bob' [comrade President Robert Gabriel Mugabe’s ZANU-PF] led government fleeing into Malawi that they could have been mistakenly regarded as tourists instead of asylum seekers.
“There are problems also facing the local tourism sector, which is characterized by a large number of Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs). In Malawi, such examples are the restaurants, tour guides at the foot of Mount Mulanje,” they said.
Nsiku and Kiratu said SMEs serve useful functions in Malawi tourism for example, the development of linkages, providing personal service.
“But for most of them, life is a daily struggle, with many of them operating at the margin of survival,” said the dual adding that however, the SMEs also desperately need more capacity building to run tourism business according to modern management principles.
In fact according to Nsiku and Kiratu the nature of tourism renders SMEs in Malawi uncompetitive, as they are unable to capitalize on the advantages that accrue from economies of scale.
“They [SMEs] also have limited resource base to benefit from this objective which is hard to achieve. The real social challenge, though, is the proliferation of foreign investors running small restaurants targeting the same international tourists.
Despite the availability of legislation to reserve certain sectors for Malawians, its enforcement is a huge challenge for the government. The upsurge of small (community based) restaurants, such as Chinese restaurants, is posing serious competition to local investors,” explained the researchers.
President Joyce Banda said to help Malawi’s current shrunken economy to erect to eradicate poverty outweighing over 65 per 100 Malawians in the country’s over 13 million population, her government has identified tourism as one of the sectors to be boosted to contribute to the country’s economic growth.
“To bring our economy back on track we have identified some sectors that need to be fully exploited. The sectors include agriculture and tourism,” she said.
However, it is yet to be seen if Malawi a destination rich in beauty will deal with all the problems contributing to its tourism sector’s current limping to instead, start walking smoothly.
A stout French-Canadian, Dominique Blanchard, 41, is on leave and decides visiting Malawi after being tipped by a friend at home [Canada] who had visited Malawi earlier that this southern African nation is rich in tourist attraction centres and heritage. Blanchard, a social scientist then decides to travel from his home town of Quebec situated about 480 Km from one of Canada's big cities, Montreal through connection flights to visit Malawi to explore the southern African state's beautiful sceneries and social heritage.
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