DEVELOPMENT-AFRICA: German Award for 2 Tourism Projects

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Jaya Ramachandran

BERLIN, Mar 5 2001 (IPS) - Two projects for socially responsible tourism in Gambia and Ghana are award winners of an international contest sponsored by a German institute.

They were awarded the so-called ‘To Do 2000’ at the weekend during the 35th International Tourism Exchange (ITB) in Berlin. Some 10,100 exhibitors from 179 countries are participating in the ITB Mar 3-7

The prize is sponsored every year by the Institute for Tourism and Development and backed, among others by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and the Berlin Fair Company.

A third project in Asia, initially chosen for the award, failed to qualify on closer scrutiny. The Institute’s chairperson, Armin Vielhaber, said that “what was to be expected sooner or later had now happened for the first time.”

After all, a ‘To Do’ award was not “judged merely academically on the ground of the documents presented,” said Vielhaber, “but only after a project has been determined as one that brings economic benefits to the people without damaging their culture.”

From a total of 15 contestants from 14 countries and five continents the Tumani Tenda Eco-Tourism Camp of the village community of Tumani Tenda, from Gambia, and the tourism project Kasapa Center from Nyanyano, near Accra in Ghana were chosen.

The Managing Director of the Institute, Dietlind von Lassberg, said that both projects; “had to a large extent developed in a holistic and socially responsible direction by their own efforts and without any substantial consultation from outside.”

This is underlined by the endeavour of the village community Tumani Umani Tenda situated at a branch of the river Gambia, located about 60 kilometres from the capital of Banjul towards the interior of the country.

The community of about 300 inhabitants comprises seven extended families mainly adhering to the Muslim faith. “This is an extraordinary community embracing specific values. It belongs to the ethnic group of the Jolas and stands up for a responsible attitude towards the living environment,” says an analysis by the Institute.

The community believes in the ‘integrity of Creation”, a humanely conceived and socially responsible style of living, respect for the elderly, honesty, independence, and sustainability.

Compared to the conditions prevailing in the rest of the country Tumani Umani Tenda is a rather prosperous and economically self-sufficient community whose inhabitants are in full employment. It owns altogether 140 hectares of land – of which 89 hectares are sustainably cultivated with a forest rich in species – which is regarded as property of the community.

All the produce is marketed on behalf of the community after the members’ own needs have been satisfied. The income earned is partly paid out to private persons according to a distribution list, partly kept by the Community Treasury, which then pays for the various expenses such as school building, school and university fees, medical and hospital bills, infrastructure measures.

“In a nutshell, the remote village of Tumani Tenda is the realisation of an utopia which, until recently, has hardly been recognised – from the Western view,” adds the Institute.

The second award-winning project, Kasapa Center, evolved from the tourist “drummer scene”, but it did not stop there – it developed in a way which, today, is a paragon and model from various points of view.

The Kasapa Centre, which has been in existence since 1996, continues to offer drumming and dancing workshops which are an essential non-verbal tool to approach the African continent, to get familiar with it and to feel confident, says the Institute based in Ammerland, southern Germany.

The centre offers holiday programmes or excursions of several days through which tourists gain new insights in and experience old traditions; they also make everyday life in Ghana more transparent.

This became possible through the contacts which Kasapa Centre has kept up for several years with villages in the interior of the country.

Gradually, the centre also developed into some kind of “consultant” for these villages whose advice on matters concerning tourism is sought out by the respective chiefs and their village communities.

“What is quite important, in this context, is the ability of Kofi Acheampong to combine his Western experiences – training as a civil engineer, and travels abroad – with his African roots,” says the Institute.

The centre is a model because it demonstrates how to reach a standard with Western environment technology, local material and traditional building style that meets the needs of European guests and which simultaneously offers feasible, affordable and functioning solutions for developing countries, especially in the tropics.

From the outside the Kasapa Centre looks like a small holiday village. It is situated at the periphery of the small fishing town of Nyanyano, about 40 kilometres west of Accra, directly on the coast.

The centre is by no means an “ex-territorial” ghetto. It is perfectly integrated into the community life of Nyanyano so that it needs not be fenced in but is open to everybody.

Says the Institute: “The Kasapa Centre implements a tourism concept Ghana can be proud of. It demonstrates how the African and European mentalities can blend into an exemplary symbiosis. Nothing must be ‘developed’ here, all that is necessary is to promote this concept.”