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Tourism in Tanzania gets massive boost with new website launch
2008-04-04 08:53:21
By Sinde Ndewasinde
Last week, the Tanzania Private Sector Foundation (TPSF) launched a new website, whose primary objective was to sell the distinctiveness of the natural riches, unique to Tanzania.
Attending the launching ceremony, the Natural Resources and Tourism minister, Shamsa Mwangunga said the achievements in the tourism sector have served to create a lot of jobs in the country\'s service industry.
However, despite the honourable minister acknowledging the importance of tourism to the economy, she nevertheless noted that this vital sector still faces critical challenges that need to be confronted for the sake of the Tanzanian body politic.
Some of the said challenges include poor infrastructure, tourism services and lack of involvement from Tanzanians as a whole.
Encouragingly though, in spite of these challenges, the influx of tourists to the country has been growing annually, which of course is good news for our state coffers.
Nevertheless, it is clear that a ferociously aggressive campaign to market Tanzania abroad needs to be undertaken by authorities to lure more tourists to Tanzania.
After all, the common misconception that Mountain Kilimanjaro is situated in Kenya and not in Tanzania offers proof that much more needs to be done to unveil Tanzania`s natural resources to the world.
There are many countries which market themselves in different ways using the media. Countries in the western or developed world have especially attractive ways of doing this.
It would be advisable to borrow a leaf from their book and showcase the natural beauty of our magnificent country.
We have plenty to be proud of. We should brag about the Kilimanjaro Mountain; as visitors often remark: it is breathtakingly beautiful.
The late Nobel laureate, Ernest Hemingway made it the subject of his book: The snows of Mountain Kilimanjaro.
Moreover, the Serengeti is unique and no other national park anywhere in the world can rival it.
These plus others should be packaged carefully and attractively, accompanied by appropriate words - even if we have to borrow from the poems of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barret Browning .
It should be any words that will sufficiently describe the beauty of our assets to attract tourists by ensuring them that their trip to Tanzania will be worthwhile.
Moving on, at the end of last week, the media reported about two families in Kagera Region which are run solely by children.
Parents in both families are deceased. In one family for example, the girl in charge is just 15 and has a younger brother who is 13. The two children have no one else.
To say the situation is sad is indeed an understatement. A 15-year old girl is herself still a child.
It is difficult to comprehend how she can take care of herself and her younger brother.
However it seems that circumstances have forced this on her.
Certainly, she would like to have an opportunity to play: jump rope, do the hopscotch or any other type of games that girls of her age engage in but sadly, she cannot.
Most of the time she has to think how to take care of herself and her kid brother, or where their next meal will come from.
This does not reflect well on society because a society is judged by the way it handles the weak and those who are too young to take care of themselves.
In traditional societies, children would have been looked after.
Society was structured in such a way that children like these would have had someone to look up to.
And indeed, in the modern day the local governments had arrangements in place for situations like these. Children should not just be left to bring themselves up.
It is not their fault that their parents are gone. Children belong to the society.
Religious bodies should also play their part in matters like these by putting to practice what they preach.
The 15-year old girl deserves a medal; she has done what many adults have often failed to do.
She has managed to keep herself and her young brother in school; some parents cannot even do this.
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