The parliament of Uganda has called for an increase in the 2024/25 budget allocated to promote the country’s tourism offerings, citing lacklustre arrival figures from international source markets and poor competitiveness compared with neighbouring East African nations.
Meeting to discuss the country’s 2023/24 tourism performance in April, the Sectoral Committee on Tourism, Trade and Industry lamented a dearth of arrivals from the US, China and Europe. In the first half of the financial year (July 1 to December 30), 67 252 tourists arrived from these markets: just 24% of the 281 760 arrivals that Uganda hopes to achieve by the end of June 2024.
Uganda’s Tourism Development Programme – which provides funding to the Ministry of Tourism and the UTB – has been allocated a total of UGX 248.7bn (€61.3m) in 2024/25, the same amount as last year.
Martin Bahinduka, Minister of State, Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities, said that unless the sector’s marketing budget was increased, the country would continue to face challenges with attracting tourists.
“The potential of the sector is enormous but the UGX10 billion (€2.4 million) budget for marketing Uganda is low,” said Bahinduka at the committee meeting.
In a statement following the meeting, the committee recommended that government should provide an additional UGX 4bn (€1m) to the Uganda Tourism Board, in order to “engage international and national media houses in production of positive media stories for improved destination image”.
The committee urged government to provide the required funds to compete with the fast-growing tourism economies of Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya and leverage attractions such as gorilla trekking. Uganda is home to approximately half of the world’s just over 1 000 mountain gorillas, but gorilla trekking revenue totalled $25 million in 2019, a quarter of the $198 million secured by Rwanda for the same period.
In March, UTB CEO Lily Ajarova expressed the need to counteract negativity generated by incidents such as last year’s terrorist attack in Queen Elizabeth National Park, which claimed the lives of two foreign tourists and their guide.
“We must be able to counter that by bringing more international media people who can verify that it is safe and then they are able to report back,” said Ajarova.
