Broadening Uganda’s tourism product base through indigenous cultural resource utilisation

Abstract

Uganda has relied on nature-based tourism for a long time in spite of the diverse and unique cultural heritage resources that can be harnessed for tourism. This has been partly due to lack of a national tourism research programme and a weak legal and regulatory framework to guide strategic exploitation of the cultural heritage resources for tourism. As a result, cultural tourism has remained under-developed. The case studies presented in this chapter illustrate the existence of an inimitable opportunity and underline the need for exploitation and packaging of Uganda’s cultural resources into unique and competitive tourism products. By presenting an ‘Afro-positive’ cultural tourism product, this would reduce competition between Uganda and its neighbours, who have comparative advantage in nature-based tourism, and position the country as a competitive destination in the world’s tourism market place.