The tourism numbers this year have increased and surpassed the visitors to Uganda’s national parks received before the coronavirus hit the country and the rest of the world in 2020.
Stephen Masaba, the director of tourism and business development at the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), said the numbers increased from 265,000 in the financial year 2021-2022 to 382,000 in the financial year 2022-2023. This represents an increase of 44% between 2021/2022 and 2022/2023, he said.
The visitors to national parks have surpassed the pre-COVID numbers, Masaba told New Vision in an interview ahead of the New Year celebrations. Masaba described Murchison Falls National Park as the most visited park, followed by Queen Elizabeth National Park. He said the protected areas are getting more visitors than ever before and that tourism is becoming resilient in the face of adverse impacts.
COVID-19 caused a global standstill as countries, including Uganda, attempted to slow down its spread. Uganda declared two lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 as part of a raft of measures to control the disease. The decreased tourist numbers caused an uphill task for UWA in protecting wildlife from poachers coming from a population that was constrained in opportunities to earn an income.
Apart from COVID-19, Uganda was also faced with the outbreak of Ebola disease in parts of central Uganda in 2022. Ebola disease is a rare and deadly disease most commonly affecting people and other primates (monkeys, gorillas and chimpanzees). Additionally, ADF terrorists reportedly attacked a school in Mpondwe, Kasese district, before returning to their hideouts in the DR Congo. The suspected terrorist returned last year, unleashing terror that ended the lives of two tourists and their Ugandan driver in Queen Elizabeth National Park.
“The tourism sector has also proved to be resilient in the face of the impacts of insecurity as well as disease outbreaks from Ebola,” Masaba said. Despite the outbreak of Ebola and security, the tourism sector is growing and surpassing the previous
numbers. “Tourists are flocking to the national parks despite the negative events; they are coming,” the URA official said.
Masaba attributed the resilience of tourism to the good leadership of the country under President Yoweri Museveni and the continued collaboration of UWA, the Uganda Police Force, and the Uganda People’s Defence Forces.
According to UWA, foreign nonresidents were taking the lion’s share of the visitor numbers to the protected areas in the financial year 2022-2023. The total number of foreign residents was 135,560 while East Africans were 101,860. The number of students who visited the national parks was 70,936. The people who transited through the parks were 56,545, and 4,820 were
either UWA staff or very important persons, VIPs.
“The impact of the e disruptions on industry investment, private sector enterprise, and our conservation efforts is significant and requires support,” he said recently in a speech at the Uganda Media Centre in Kampala.
Amos Wekesa, the chief executive officer of Uganda Lodges Limited, said a tourist coming to Uganda creates 10 opportunities in different sectors, including hotels, transport, agriculture and handicraft makers and guides.