COMMUNITY BASED TOURISM - BOTSWANA

History and Definition

Community based tourism is a concept that began evolving in Botswana from the early 1980’s. Tourism originally started in Botswana during the 1960’s as safari hunting in East Africa was in the process of being closed down and companies started to move into the southern African countries.

Photographic safaris started as an off-shoot of the hunting safaris and only really began to become a serious industry in the mid 1980’s. The Botswana Government began to look at restructuring the tourism industry to facilitate a better distribution of the economic returns and to encourage more local participation. The government started to take steps in the early 1980’s to break up foreign owned monopolies that leased huge areas of land in the delta, called concessions. These large concessions were broken down in to smaller concessions, called Wildlife Management Areas (WMA’s). The WMA’s were then divided into 3 categories, some being leased to hunting companies, some being leased to photographic companies, and some being turned over to communities to be operated in a joint-venture partnerships with a selected tourist company. Essentially the community should have the rights to the resources and the company should have the business and the marketing expertise, the alliance benefiting both the communities and the company.

The concept is a bold and progressive step by the Botswana government to decentralise control of natural resources and to bring rural communities into the largest growing industry in the country. But because the process is new, there are, and will be problems, in establishing an equitable and balanced system.

Audi Camp's Involvement

Audi Camp not only encourages this decentralisation but would like to see it go even further. We have been attempting to help communities set up their own businesses, establish their own business systems and records, and obtain leases and rights to resources in their own business names. We, in effect, work with the communities as a business to a business. They are paid for the use of their skills and resources (mokoros, polers, camping, crafts, traditional dances, etc) and we are paid for our resources and expertise (vehicles, camps, marketing, etc.), a system that could be considered equivalent to outsourcing.

We hope that this type of an approach will encourage the communities to take a stronger role in maintaining their areas and resources. If the communities see that jobs and income can be earned from wildlife and wilderness areas and that they can directly benefit from and manage these resources, they will be less inclined to move toward cattle farming or bring in industrial development.