Overview
Tourism ideally contributes to sustainable poverty reduction and local development. In Kenya vision 2030, tourism is seen as an important strategy for achieving various policy goals: it is expected to generate (redistributive) economic growth, while providing the poor with new opportunities for escaping poverty.
Kenya Vision 2030 is a national plan of action to turn Kenya into a middle income country by the year 2030. The document identifies Tourism as one of the six pillars for growth. The other pillars are agriculture, retail and wholesale, manufacturing, business process outsourcing (BPO) and financial services.
This paper generally advances the argument that tourism as presented in Kenya vision 2030 is generally a different method of doing business the same way, is not likely to lead to growth sustainable tourism in Kenya, is not achievable as currently constituted, and that the future development of sustainable tourism in Kenya is depended on investment in local entrepreneurship, diversification of the tourism products and a complete departure from the existing “foreign centric” models of doing business. The paper further explores challenges in Kenya’s tourism sector, and provides possible actionable strategies that would help in actualizing the tourism potential as envisioned in Kenya vision 2030. The paper also provides arguments and analyses of factors that influence the feasibility of such strategies.
Sponser
MD. Kyule.
Principal Investigator
Abstract
Tourism ideally contributes to sustainable poverty reduction and local development. In Kenya vision 2030, tourism is seen as an important strategy for achieving various policy goals: it is expected to generate (redistributive) economic growth, while providing the poor with new opportunities for escaping poverty.
Kenya Vision 2030 is a national plan of action to turn Kenya into a middle income country by the year 2030. The document identifies Tourism as one of the six pillars for growth. The other pillars are agriculture, retail and wholesale, manufacturing, business process outsourcing (BPO) and financial services.
This paper generally advances the argument that tourism as presented in Kenya vision 2030 is generally a different method of doing business the same way, is not likely to lead to growth sustainable tourism in Kenya, is not achievable as currently constituted, and that the future development of sustainable tourism in Kenya is depended on investment in local entrepreneurship, diversification of the tourism products and a complete departure from the existing “foreign centric” models of doing business. The paper further explores challenges in Kenya’s tourism sector, and provides possible actionable strategies that would help in actualizing the tourism potential as envisioned in Kenya vision 2030. The paper also provides arguments and analyses of factors that influence the feasibility of such strategies.