LIVE,STUDY and WORK in AFRICA

Posted by Peter Nyakundi Ongera at April 26. 2008

As a social entrepreneur and consultant I believe that Africa can eradicate poverty through Travel philanthropy.
I run an African cultural tourism agency that links up tourists who want to LIVE(homestay), STUDY (cultural and educational)and WORK (internship and volunteer)in Africa with local hosts in rural villages and towns.
African Homestay Services,the agency, is basically a public interest initiative to market Africa as a tourist-friendly destination with unspoilt environment, climate,wildlife,natural landscape,rich cultural and historical heritage.
I encourage tourists to visit Africa as their contribution to POVERTY REDUCTION especially at the local level by Africans getting benefits from tourism.Tourism is one of the leading "ready" exports and foreign exchange earners for most African countries.But almost 85% on money tourism earnings goes back to foreign investors or countries of origin of the tourists because most hotels,travel agencies,airlines lodges,ranches,villas etc are foreign owned.
Tourism revenue to Africa is far bigger than foreign aid to Africa! Africa's share of global tourism revenues according to the UN is 3.6% and tourism accounts for more than 11% of Africa's GDP.
Cultural tourism(homestay being part of it) accounts for 5% of global tourism and is growing at the rate of 20-30% per year according to World Tourism Organisation.
Homestay benefits the locals where the tourists LIVE,STUDY and do voluntary WORK.
It is a pity that most governments and tourism institutions do not grasp this concept of locals benefitting from tourism.They are only interested in job creation , investment and tax payment as the communities along the tourist circuits live in abject poverty!
Tourism must benefit the tourist and the locals.That is why I pioneer and champion homestay tourism ,cultural immersion and voluntary work concepts to help the communities along tourist circuits with homestay fees(paid to hosts),cross-cultural learning(how much of one's culture or heritage can a tourist learn in a hotel compared with staying with a Maasai family?) and other community projects where guests volunteer.

Drop me a line and learn more.

ngerapeter@yahoo.com">ongerapeter@yahoo.com

Re: LIVE,STUDY and WORK in AFRICA

Posted by Caroline Kosmas at May 18. 2008

Hi Peter,

My name is Caroline Kosmas and I'm a medical student from Canada. My husband lived in rural Zambia for 4 months in the summer of 2005 working with the Zambian Ministry of Agriculture and an NGO who's main objective was to improve the incomes of small scale farmers. The project he worked on mainly focused on small scale irrigation through foot powered water pumps. Anyways, he really loved it in Zambia and we returned to the country in the summer of 2007 to explore the prospect of starting a business in Zambia. We traveled to Lusaka, the capital city, to Livingstone, the tourist city and villages around Kalomo, a smaller town along Zambia's main highway. We completed film interviews of a university professor and business consultant, a female agronomist, a fair trade soap producer, a group of musical performers that mentors/employs at risk youth, a farmer trainer (Joseph Andrew's best friend in Zambia) and a small scale farmer. The main objectives of this trip was to figure out if our business idea is plausible and to visit friends Andrew made in Zambia.

While we were in Zambia we stayed at hostels when we were not in the village. The hostels we stayed in employed and provided tourist opportunities that employed local Zambians. Unfortunately, we never met the owners of the hostels so I wonder now if they were Zambians. Likely one was but I don't think the other two were.

Anyways, the reason I am emailing you today is to ask where you are located in Africa? My husband and I have hired someone to work on our business plan for this summer and we hope to start things up next year. The shortest way to explain the plan in basically a fair trade, member owned, organic farm. The farm will likely grow fruits, vegetables and cotton organically. We may also produce some biofuel. Our vision is to provide stable incomes and investment in the community. After the farm is established we hope there will be a tourism component to the operation and may need some employees like yourself.

I doubt you are in Zambia since you speak of the Maasai who are Kenyans but just wanted to let you know that I totally agree with you that tourism is a great way for westerners to support the African economy. A barrier I found when we travelled to Zambia is that we didn't know local Zambians who owned tourist operations in Lusaka or Livingstone. You seem to be working to increase this exposure which is awesome. Perhaps you could write an article on the social edge website about some of the businesses you're involved with and where travellers can go to find locally owned and operated tourist operations. We found the hostels we stayed at in Lonely Planet's travel guide for Zambia. This book is very popular among travellers and perhaps they would include some of the tourist operations you're involved in in the next edition of the book.

Caroline Kosmas

City of Saskatoon, Canada