Livelihoods, Conservation and Community-based Tourism in Tanzania: Potential and Performance - Responsible Tourism: Critical Issues for Conservation and Development - page 281

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Livelihoods, Conservation and
Community-based Tourism in Tanzania:
Potential and Performance
Fred Nelson
Introduction
For the past two decades, Tanzania has had one of Africa's most rapidly growing
tourism industries. Following the liberalization of the country's economic policies
beginning in 1986, the tourism industry has expanded from annual revenues of
US$65 million in 1990 to over US$800 million today, accounting for around
10-15 per cent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). The country's
tourism industry is based on a suite of natural and biological assets that few other
African nations can match: the unparalleled abundance of wildlife in the Serengeti
ecosystem; Africa's largest wildlife protected area in the Selous Game Reserve;
Mount Kilimanjaro; and 1000km of pristine reef-fringed Indian Ocean coastline.
Just as tourism has come to play a major role in the country's sustained macroeco-
nomic growth of the past decade, tourism revenues underpin national investments
in biodiversity conservation through a protected area network that covers over 25
per cent of the country's land area. For example, the Serengeti National Park
generates about US$8.5 million annually in revenue from visitor entry fees and
other levies. This revenue not only funds management of the Serengeti but other,
newer parks elsewhere in the country (TANAPA, 2005).
At the national level, the growth of Tanzania's tourism industry has thus had
important and often positive economic and environmental impacts. However, one
of the foremost characteristics of the Tanzanian economy since the abandonment
of socialism 20 years ago is that macroeconomic growth and stability have not