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Reducing poverty through wildlife tourism in South Africa’s Kruger National Park

Tourism is the fastest growing sector in the South African economy. The government’s tourism policy recognises the potential to reduce poverty and has national guidelines for responsible tourism. When applied, the guidelines increase the benefits from tourism for people who were disadvantaged under apartheid, and for communities in tourist destinations.

The tourism industry is very competitive, and it is difficult for disadvantaged groups and communities to get involved. However, there is a wide range of tourism products and services. This diversity means that tourism has the potential to contribute to poverty reduction. It provides opportunities for different people to earn a living, including workers in the informal sector and women. Tourism also provides opportunities for small businesses, since the customer (the tourist) comes to the product, reducing costs for producers.

Research from the International Centre for Responsible Tourism compared the economic impacts of four tourism businesses in and around the Kruger National Park. The research demonstrates how much each business contributes to poverty reduction and how they might increase their impact.

Three of the four businesses are privately owned, and the other is parastatal (meaning owned wholly or partly by the government). All offer accommodation within a conservation area, with standards ranging from basic to luxury, as well as wildlife viewing excursions. The communities near to the businesses all have low rates of employment and high levels of poverty.

The research, which involved community members and the businesses, shows:

Most employees of the private businesses lived locally. The majority of people wanted to work locally in rural areas (rather than moving to cities) and were interested in working in tourism.
In one community, tourism had lifted about four percent of the local population out of poverty. This effectively doubled the proportion of local people living above the poverty line.
All of the businesses collect donations and/or give a percentage of their turnover to community projects, most notably environmental education. Donations from tourists provided most of these funds.

Most community members did not feel that they were dependent on tourism, largely because they saw few benefits from it. They also identified several key barriers to greater involvement in tourism. These included a lack of education, training and information about employment opportunities, and few opportunities to provide goods and services to tourism businesses.

For more poor people to benefit from tourism in the region, these businesses could:

make employment opportunities more equal by advertising employment vacancies openly, rather than asking existing staff for recommendations
help local people to develop goods and services that meet the needs of the tourism industry, for example through micro-credit or training to local entrepreneurs
buy more local agricultural produce
target money from tourist donations and development funds at education and training, to reduce barriers to entering the tourism industry
assess their local economic impact and make plans to improve it, using their initial data as a baseline against which to measure change.

Source(s):
‘Nature-Based Tourism and Poverty Alleviation: Impacts of Private Sector and Parastatal Enterprises In and Around Kruger National Park, South Africa’, Current Issues in Tourism, 10, 2&3, pages 255-277, by Anna Spenceley and Harold Goodwin, 2007

Funded by: The Leverhulme Trust

id21 Research Highlight: 16 July 2007

Further Information:
Anna Spenceley
Transboundary Protected Areas Research Initiative
University of the Witwatersrand
Private Bag X3, 2050
Wits
South Africa

Tel: +27 31 2085523
Fax: +27 31 2085523
Contact the contributor: annaspenceley@hotmail.com

International Centre for Responsible Tourism

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