Blessing or curse? The political economy of tourism development in Tanzania

AbstractThis paper analyses how tourism development in Tanzania is shaped in fundamental ways by the political–economic forces governing many post-colonial African states. Politics in Tanzania are characterized by a highly centralized and weakly accountable state, a prevalence of informal rent-seeking interests, institutionalized corruption in government at all levels and the intermingling of a developmentalist discourse built on foreign and private investment with the patronage and accumulative rent-seeking interests of political elites. Natural resources including land, forests and wildlife are central to these political processes, as is tourism as a major source of foreign exchange and investment. The resultant limitations on local communities and ordinary citizens to be able to create tourism enterprises that capture tourism's value as a poverty alleviation instrument are largely a function of the wider political economy, and the dependence of tourism on state-owned and controlled resources such as national parks and wildlife. Illustrations of growing conflicts over land tenure, wildlife revenues and access to tourism benefits in northern Tanzania are given. The development of explicitly rights-based approaches to tourism that emphasize tenure and devolved governance would aid the implementation of poverty alleviation strategies, as would research into the political economy of tourism and its governance.祝福或诅咒?坦桑尼亚的旅游发展的政治经济该文章分析了坦桑尼亚旅游发展是如何被影响许多后殖民主义非洲国家的政治经济因素在基础方面来改变的。坦桑尼亚的政治是被形容成一个高度中央集权和弱影响力的国家,有着巨大的非正式租金收取的兴趣,政府各层面的制度化腐败和一种建立在国外的私企投资资助和政府官员不断的租金收取兴趣上的混合发展主义意识。自然资源包括土地,森林和野生动物,这些对政治资产都是最重要的,因为旅游是外资交换和投资的主要来源。结论显示当地居民和普通公民若能创造旅游企业并利用旅游作为贫困缩减的功能,这绝对是更广的政治经济手段,也是旅游依赖国家属有和控制的资源,例如国家公元和野生动物,的有效手段。但结论显示现阶段这还是有限制性。旅游中明确的以权利为基础的手段的发展能够帮助贫困缩减战略的实施和帮助旅游政治经济和政策制订的研究。Keywords: tourismTanzaniadevelopmentpolitical economypoverty reduction关键词: 旅游坦桑尼亚发展政治经济贫困缩减 Notes1. Unlike the allocation and ownership of trophy-hunting concessions, which has been subjected to a fairly high level of public scrutiny in recent years, little information is available with regard to senior public officials' links with major tourism developments in state-protected areas, beyond an abundance of web-based rumours and speculation. However, as far back as the mid-1990s, the government's Warioba Commission into corruption, commissioned by President Mkapa shortly after he assumed office in 1995, identified a range of specific instances of corruption in relation to the development of tourism lodges in such areas (Visram, 1997).Additional informationNotes on contributorsFred NelsonFred Nelson has worked on natural resource governance, rural development, land tenure and payments for ecosystem services in eastern Africa since 1998. He is now the Executive Director of Maliasili Initiatives, an organization which supports and builds the capacity of local organizations in Africa at the interface of biodiversity conservation, social justice and rural development. He is a member of the IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic, and Social Policy and World Commission on Protected Areas. He edited Community Rights, Conservation, and Contested Lands: The Politics of Natural Resource Governance in Africa (Earthscan, 2010).