President Museveni
Uganda’s President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni on Wednesday launched the Uganda Giants` Conservation and Tourism Investment Forum.
Uganda will be hosting the Uganda ‘Giants Club Conservation and Tourism Investment Forum’ on Friday 6th October 2017. The Forum is aimed at launching a new initiative to attract tourism into Uganda, make it a destination for high-end paying clients, and secure long-term sources of funding for the protection and maintenance of Uganda’s Protected Area network.
The Giants Club Conservation and Tourism Investment Forum aims to optimise commercial revenue opportunities in Uganda’s Conservation Estate, to generate revenue for wildlife authorities and to expose visitors to the country’s spectacular natural heritage.
“I am tasking the Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities together with the Giants Club to collaborate in the delivery of the Investment Forum in October 2017,” President Museveni said on Wednesday as he launched the forum.
It is expected to bring Uganda’s government together with international hotel and lodge developers, tourism businesses, high-net-worth individuals, institutional donors, and conservationists.
The Investment Forum specifically seeks to create strategies to contribute to increase Tourist arrivals from the 1,323,000 in 2016 to 4,084,000 in 2020; foreign exchange earnings from US$ 1.371 billion to US$2.7 billion in 2020; promote job creation; and increase the contribution of tourism to GDP from Shillings 7.3 trillion to shillings 14.68 trillion at the end of the FY 2020.
The Giants Club unites visionary leaders of African elephant-range states, enlightened heads of major businesses operating in Africa, global philanthropists, key influencers and leading wildlife protection experts. Together, these individuals provide the very highest levels of political action, financial investment, global influence and technical capacity that are needed to protect Africa’s remaining elephant populations from poaching, habitat loss, and human-elephant conflict.The Giants Club’s goal is to protect half of Africa’s elephants by 2020.
Founding members of the Giants Club are President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, President Ali Bongo of Gabon and the Tlhokomela Endangered Wildlife Trust of Botswana with President Ian Khama as its Patron. The four countries represented in the Club’s founding membership are together home to half of Africa’s savannah elephants and half of its forest elephants.
Uganda needs to be rediscovered for tourism potentials; the traditional attractions like conservation areas need to be supplemented by the cultural heritage that is diverse yet untapped; we could organise, say Uganda Cultural Gala that could show case the different life styles in Uganda, food tasting, cultural music etc and this could for a week say preceding Independence Day; we advertise it heavily, and who will not want to jet in and see such wonderful moments?