Positive Tourism in Africa provides a crucial counter-narrative to the prevailing colonial and reductionist perspective on Africa’s tourism trajectory and future. It offers a uniquely optimistic outlook for tourism in Africa whilst acknowledging the many challenges that African countries continue to grapple with. By examining broad and localized empirical studies, conceptual frameworks, culturally centered paradigms, and innovative methodological approaches for African contexts, this book showcases the many facets of tourism in Africa that illustrate hope, resilience, growth, and survival. This volume explores themes such as community-based tourism, wildlife tourism, tourism governance and leadership, crisis recovery, regional integration, the role of indigenous knowledge, event tourism and the impact of smart technologies. It acknowledges the challenges and opportunities for growth that exist in these various contexts and explores how tourism creates value for the spectrum of its participants. Including a wide selection of contributions from diverse authors, many of them African, this book offers an Afro-centric interpretation of tourism phenomena. It will be of great interest to students, researchers and academics in the field of Tourism and African Studies, as well as Development Studies and Geography.

Positive Tourism in Africa provides a crucial counter-narrative to the prevailing colonial and reductionist perspective on Africa’s tourism trajectory and future. It offers a uniquely optimistic outlook for tourism in Africa whilst acknowledging the many challenges that African countries continue to grapple with. By examining broad and localized empirical studies, conceptual frameworks, culturally centered paradigms, and innovative methodological approaches for African contexts, this book showcases the many facets of tourism in Africa that illustrate hope, resilience, growth, and survival. This volume explores themes such as community-based tourism, wildlife tourism, tourism governance and leadership, crisis recovery, regional integration, the role of indigenous knowledge, event tourism and the impact of smart technologies. It acknowledges the challenges and opportunities for growth that exist in these various contexts and explores how tourism creates value for the spectrum of its participants. Including a wide selection of contributions from diverse authors, many of them African, this book offers an Afro-centric interpretation of tourism phenomena. It will be of great interest to students, researchers and academics in the field of Tourism and African Studies, as well as Development Studies and Geography.

This book presents how tourism initiates economic development and how constraints to the growth of tourism in Sub-Saharan Africa can be addressed. With 24 case studies that illustrate tourism development, it reveals that despite destination challenges, the basic elements needed to initialize or intensify success are applicable across the region.

This book investigates urban tourism development in Sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting the challenges and risks involved, but also showcasing the potential benefits. Whilst much is written on Africa’s rural environments, little has been written about the tourism potential of the vast natural, cultural and historical resources in the continent’s urban areas. Yet these opportunities also come with considerable environmental, social and political challenges. This book interrogates the interactions between urban risks, tourism and sustainable development in Sub-Saharan African urban spaces. It addresses the underlying issues of governance, power, ownership, collaboration, justice, community empowerment and policies that influence tourism decision-making at local, national and regional levels. Interrogating the intricate relationships between tourism stakeholders, this book ultimately reflects on how urban risk can be mitigated, and how sustainable urban tourism can be harnessed for development. The important insights in this book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners across Tourism, Geography, Urban Development, and African Studies.

Tourism affects millions of individuals, numerous societies and environments in multiple, nuanced and overlapping ways. While it can be viewed as a frivolous leisure pursuit or simply a large industry, with potentially destructive impacts, it might also be understood in terms of its effects on human fulfilment, the good life and greater well-being. This book calls for positive tourism, principally grounded in theories from positive psychology (the study of what makes life worth living), and the development of a body of knowledge that explains what characterises optimal tourist experiences, what enables host communities to flourish and what encourages workers in tourism to thrive. Through original research studies reported in this international volume we aim to further develop this knowledge. The intersections between ongoing and traditionally inspired applications of psychology in tourism and this new thrust in psychological inquiry promise to refresh and challenge tourism research. This book will appeal to researchers and academics in tourism, leisure, positive psychology, management and related fields as well as graduate students, professionals and policy makers.

This volume discusses the complex relationship between Protected Areas and tourism and their impact on community livelihoods in a range of countries in Southern Africa. Protected areas and tourism have an enduring and symbiotic relationship. While protected areas offer a desirable setting for tourism products, tourism provides revenue that can contribute to conservation efforts. This can bring benefits to local communities, but it can also have a negative impact, with the establishment of protected areas leading to the eviction of local communities from their original places of residence, while also preventing them from accessing the natural resources they once enjoyed. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, this book addresses the opportunities and challenges faced by communities and other stakeholders as they endeavour to achieve their conservation goals and work towards improving community livelihoods. Case studies from Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe address key issues such as human–wildlife conflicts, ecotourism, wildlife-based tourism, landscape governance, wildlife crop-raiding and trophy hunting, including the high-profile case of Cecil the lion. Chapters highlight both the achievements and positive outcomes of protected areas, but also the challenges faced and their impact on how protected areas are viewed and also conservation priorities more generally. The volume gives these issues affecting protected areas, local communities, managers and international conservation efforts centre stage in order inform policy and improve practice going forward. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of conservation, natural resource management, tourism, sustainable development and African studies, as well as professionals and policymakers involved in conservation policy.

Over the past 20 years, the perception of tourism as an effective contributor to socio-economic development in the developing world has propagated, with many viewing tourism as a provider for poverty alleviation and towards other UN Millennium Development Goals. Over the same period, readers have become familiar with the paradoxes, complexities and inequalities of tourism in relation to development, wealth creation, growth, redistribution, governance and ‘hosts-guests’ relationships. This volume further extends this critical debate with a much-needed cohesive publication on Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA). In an era of fluctuating tourist arrivals at global level, the growth of tourism in SSA requires deeper consideration in terms of its inconsistent and questionable implications at local level. Taking as a central theme the debate on whether tourism should be used in development efforts, this book examines the way in which tourism has controversially become the way forward to development in several SSA locations and assesses bottlenecks to sustainable development as well as dilemmas and challenges faced by those SSA destinations seeking to achieve development through tourism. It offers an explicit set of chapters adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, drawing upon tourism studies, human geography, sociology, anthropology, political economy, development and environmental studies, and integrates case studies authored by local African practitioners and academics to produce a book that gave voice to local experts on local realities. Combining an overview of key theories, concepts, contemporary issues and debates as well as practical insights from a wide range of regions in SSA, this book will be a valuable resource for those investigating the role of tourism in development.