Doreen Silver Katusiime is the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Tourism Wildlife and Antiquities whose mandate is to formulate and implement policies, strategies, plans, and programs that promote tourism, wildlife, and cultural heritage conservation for socio-economic development and transformation of the country. She has seen the ministry grow to where it is now.
Where did you find the Ministry of Tourism and where have you brought it this far?
When I came in, the budget for the ministry for 2015/16 was close to UShs90Bn, out of which Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) contributed about 90 percent which accounted for close to UShs70bn.
But now the budget has grown to UShs214Bn in the next financial year. We have seen the budget grow to more than double. We have seen UWA double its revenue collections from about UShs70bn a year before COVID-19 to about UShs130bn.
We have seen the other agencies Uganda Wildlife Conservation Education Centre (UWEC), Uganda Hotel and Tourism Institute, and Uganda Wildlife Training and Research Institute also grow.
We have seen the Uganda Museum doubling its revenue collections. For me, that’s major because without resources you cannot do much and it shows that we don’t just take from the government but we bring in apart from the money that comes from private tourism businesses, we as a ministry generate revenue.
What are some of the indicators of growth in the tourism sector?
In the last nine months of the last financial year, we have sent about UShs3.6bn to URA from our agencies apart from UWA because UWA collects and uses. We have seen the ministry grow and agencies become stronger.
We have seen more private-sector collaborations. Covid-19 hit us very hard but the recovery is encouraging because in 2020 almost everything collapsed following the travel and hospitality business ban.
The number of tourists dropped from about 1.5 million to 400, 000 but today we have seen the numbers grow to pre-COVID-19 times. Our number of visitors at UWEC, for example, has grown to about 120 percent, the number of visitors to national parks has doubled and what is more exciting is that 60 percent of them are now Ugandans which has never happened. Those are some of the indicators we look at to determine the growth of the sector.
How is the tourism sector recovering and resumption from the shocks of Covid-19?
I will look at that from two angles, one the direct contribution of the government in terms of supporting the private sector which wasn’t the only one affected by COVID-19 but it was the most hit.
Tourism got a special fund from the government and the European Union through the Uganda Development Bank (UDB). The funds have been accessed by a number of our stakeholders in the sector of tourism like hoteliers and tour operators.
It was six million Euros and at different intervals, we have been getting updates from UDB. At the beginning, it was difficult because the businesses were just recovering and some of them couldn’t meet the stringent requirements of the bank but a number of them have accessed the money.
We also got some money from the World Bank, of about two million dollars where these private companies compete for grants, not loans. The recovery on the other hand is not directly putting in money but working with the private sector to know where they need support, and what the government can do better whether it’s in terms of market or branding because that’s what makes the numbers.
Government markets and private sector sales. The government brought in some policies like differing loans which gave them breathing space so we have seen some recovery.
Of course, some companies collapsed completely and it will take them a few years to recover but on the whole, we have seen people regain their jobs like seven out of 10 in the tourism sector.
In the journey of sectoral growth and recovery, partnerships have been key which is in line with this year’s United Nations (UN) theme, pleasure elucidate on the relevance of partnerships to tourism…
Tourism like any other industry can only thrive through partnerships. The first partnership is the private sector. Tourism is public sector-led but private sector-driven.
It is the private sector that runs hotels, restaurants, tour operators, and guides, so we have tried to strengthen our partnership with the private sector through their umbrella associations.
We have a meeting every quota to discuss the burning issues. That has informed our planning and identified what they need. For example, we have contributed to training their members in terms of business development, corporate governance, and capacity building for them to be able to run these associations and be able to benefit their members.
We have partnerships with development partners who support conservation. People tend to limit conservation to nature but we have culture and heritage.
We have benefitted a lot from the support from UNESCO when it comes to heritage, we are about to complete the restoration of the Kasubi Tombs. It has taken more than a decade but we have submitted to UNESCO to remove Kasubi Tombs from the list of endangered lists.
The government put in some money but we have been working with technical people to make sure that everything is done well, and well documented, and recently through the Japanese support we received firefighting equipment which has been fully installed and tested.
We have a lot of partnerships with UNDP, EU, and USAID in terms of many issues like anti-poaching, and illegal wildlife trade. We are now implementing a project between UWA and the Ministry of Environment which is looking at the resilience in protected areas. Without these partnerships, it would have been hard.
What more needs to be done to improve our conservation efforts?
The motto for UWA says conserving for generations. You need to look at the current social, economic, and environmental impacts for the current and future generations.
You can’t look at conservation without environmental protection. When people go to the parks, they tend to say that there are no animals because they have moved from the places they used to be.
We have problems with encroachment because both the human and animal population are growing so we must sensitize people about the benefits of conservation. It’s a big issue and when you see parliament almost daily a member raises matters of national importance where animals have either killed their constituents or destroyed their crops.
So, we have to protect the animals and human beings and their property. We need to invest more money in tourism as a country, especially the things that make us unique, especially the diversity of our cultures, foods, and ethnic groups and we have not taken so much advantage of these things.
