The geographically and culturally diverse country of Ethiopia in Africa’s horn is recognised as a rewarding tourist destination for those looking for more than beaches and safaris. But while the government eyes up the potential revenue, more needs to be done to improve the experience and give the sector a boost.
“The ruling party has never taken it seriously,” says Tony Hickey, the manager of the well-established Ethiopian Quadrants tours in the capital, Addis Ababa. The government has invested resources in other strategic areas of the economy, such as leather and floriculture, but little has been done to improve infrastructure and services for tourists, Hickey believes.
Without better planning and administration, it will be hard for the country to move concertedly in the direction of sustainable tourism, operators maintain. The industry has been battling the tax authority over a VAT directive and arguing over duty-free privileges to import vehicles, says Hickey.
Currently, the vast majority of visitors engage in classic tours that take them to visit attractions like the obelisks of the ancient Axumite civilisation, or the magnificent churches of Lalibela carved out of rock in the 12th and 13th centuries. In the south near the Kenyan border, tours to the South Omo offer visitors the chance to mingle with tribes like the lip-plate inserting Mursi.
Partly through neglect, one of the main destinations, Axum, doesn’t yet have an international-standard hotel, Hickey says, explaining the deficiencies.
One operator that has made a successful venture into sustainable tourism is Mark Chapman, who heads Tesfa Tours. The operation has evolved from a charity in 2003 called Tourism in Ethiopia for Sustainable Future Alternatives, which was run with donor support. The current model is a network of communities organised into cooperatives that host visitors during overnight stops on treks. The guides have set up their own businesses, while Tesfa Tours now does the marketing and booking as a private company.
“Tesfa developed the concept of a network of community-run tourism enterprises that would allow tourists to trek across the remarkable landscape, getting closer to the real culture of the Ethiopian highlands, and at the same time put precious money into the local communities for whom farming is becoming ever more precarious a livelihood,” Chapman says.
Another area of promise is Community Conservation Areas (CCAs), several of which have been established by the Ethiopian Sustainable Tourism Alliance in partnership with the US Agency for International Development. The framework is for local communities to be supported in conservation and eco-tourism development. Such schemes are of particular importance in the Ethiopian highlands, which has suffered environmental degradation due to intensive land use over the millennia.
A CCA has been proposed in the deep south of the country in Mursiland, home to the Mursi people. With the pressures of commercial agriculture – particularly state-run sugar plantations under construction – and two national parks, the conservation area could prove a lifeline for the Mursi, if it allows them to continue their traditional lifestyles while benefiting from well-managed tourism. However, for it to succeed, it will need not only the permission but also the active support of the government in Addis Ababa.