Ecotourism expert is keynote speaker at CU conference on African tourism

By Linda Myers

Tourism in Africa's underdeveloped regions is growing at an accelerated rate. Will it help alleviate poverty and build infrastructure on the African continent, or will it, instead, create a new set of problems?

A major conference on tourism, sustainable tourism, culture and development in Africa will take place Saturday, Oct. 4, in the McManus Lounge of Hollister Hall on Cornell's Engineering Quad. It is free and open to the public. No registration is needed to attend.

The conference will focus on the role of tourism in African development and its impact, positive and negative, on culture and communities. It seeks to promote a better understanding of the issues and expose participants to best practices and policies. Featured are a keynote address by an international expert on ecotourism and the participation of world-renowned practitioners, scholars, policy-makers and researchers in the tourism field. It is sponsored by Cornell's Institute for African Development (IAD), in collaboration with the International Institute for Peace through Tourism, a Vermont-based not-for-profit organization dedicated to nurturing and facilitating tourism initiatives.

The keynote speaker is Neel Inamdar, a private consultant and director of finance and administration for the International Ecotourism Society and the Center for Ecotourism and Sustainable Development, a joint program of Stanford University and the Institute for Policy Studies. His talk, "Tourism, Culture and Development in Africa," begins the conference at 9 a.m.

Inamdar is a 1990 graduate of Cornell's School of Hotel Administration and has extensive tourism, ecotourism and hospitality experience in Europe, the United States and East Africa. After spending more than a decade involved in the development, marketing, financing and operation of tourism facilities, he has focused on developing sustainable tourism solutions to address poverty alleviation and conservation threats.

"One of the major obstacles to development in Africa is a lack of capital to meet the huge demands for the construction of infrastructure," said Muna Ndulo, director of the IAD and Cornell professor of law. "Many countries view tourism as a potential source of capital. This conference gives participants the opportunity to examine the role of tourism in development and its impact on societies."

Tourism is particularly important for developing countries, Ndulo observed. It is one of the economic sectors through which the 49 least-developed countries have managed to increase their participation in the global economy, and it is the primary source of foreign exchange in nearly all of them. It also continues to grow. In 1950, all developing countries combined had only a 3 percent share of international tourism. By 2000, that share had increased to 39 percent, according to the World Trade Organization, which predicts a continuing 4 to 4.5 percent annual growth. In addition, total arrivals of tourists in developing countries worldwide were at 5.1 million in 2000 -- an increase of nearly 75 percent from the figure a decade earlier.

Conference participants and the organizations they represent include: Agi Kiss, senior lead ecologist, Africa environment and social development group at the World Bank; Tom Milton, senior investment officer, global manufacturing and services department of International Finance Corp.; Giovanni Di Cola, Universitas program coordinator at the International Labor Organization; Fred Nelson, representative, Kenya office of the World Bank; Louis D'Amore, president of the International Institute for Peace through Tourism; Amit Shamar, professor of apparel, educational studies and hospitality management at the University of Iowa; Duane Chapman, professor of environmental economics at Cornell; and Margaret Greico, visiting professor at the Institute for African Development at Cornell.

Also participating is Mira Berman, executive director, Africa Travel Association; Kifle Gebremedhin, professor of biological and environmental engineering at Cornell; and David Stipanuk, professor of hotel management at Cornell.

For more information on the conference, contact the IAD at 255-6849 or visit http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/africa/.