The Uganda Tourism Board has partnered with the communication regulator, Uganda Communications Commission(UCC) in a bid to promote the country’s tourism.
The heads of both agencies met at UTB offices in Kampala and mooted a plan through which they can collaborate.
Speaking during the meeting, UTB CEO, Juliana Kagwa said under the National Development Plan IV that seeks to see a tenfold growth for the economy, the country’s tourism earnings are expected to grow 25 times.
“This growth means we need enablers in the private sector, banking sector and telecom company among others. These need to understand our strategy and what their role in this is. Our strategy as UTB is that we want to be seen as the go to tourism agency for government. We are therefore looking at public-private partnerships,” Kagwa said during the meeting.
She said that in case of partnerships with the telecom sector players, the regulator, UCC must come in handy to endorse these partnerships.
Product development
The UTB CEO also mentioned tourism product development that the agency is soon embarking on but said they need support from other stakeholders like UCC.
“Uganda is so much more. When we say explore Uganda, we don’t mean only national parks. There are so many untapped things like culture, food and many others. In this aspect, when we develop new tourism products, we want support from UCC in terms of connectivity. A tourist wants to climb Mountain Rwenzori and upload real-time pictures for the world to know but connectivity on top of the Rwenzori is poor. We need UCC to help us here,” Kagwa said.
“Lake Victoria is so untapped. We need to attract investors to construct a city on the lake. For example, if we get investors putting place floating resorts in the middle of Lake Victoria, there must be connectivity and this is where UCC comes in to help us. We need to have connectivity in all our 10 national parks and across all our culture and heritage sites among others.”
She emphasized the need to digitize Uganda’s tourist attractions, noting that this way more tourists can be attracted but also the attractions will be easily marketed, online.
“Uganda should be a tourism market place where everyone meets to trade. We will have visibility and transparency. When almost everyone is digitized, people will enjoy economies of scale. Our visitors should be able to communicate with their families and friends in real time as part of the promotion of our destination Uganda.”
The UTB CEO said inter-agency collaboration will spur the country’s development at large.
The UCC Executive Director, Nyombi Thembo welcomed the partnership that he said will go a long way in driving the growth of not only the tourism sector but the economy at large.
“This partnership will help attract tourists into the country but also branding Uganda as the best destination. As UCC we are here to help support UTB do their work and they also help us execute our mission of connecting Uganda,” Thembo said.
“When you talk of branding Uganda you cant fail to put communication at the front seat. When you talk of visitors for international conferences, the first thing they will ask for is connectivity. We are here to listen to UTB and see how we can help them.”
Thembo said under the new licencing regime, telecom companies are required to have at least 95% of the geographical area of the country, noting that these are required to have 4G network coverage.
