Rock Art and Tourism in Tanzania: In Search for Innovations

Abstract

Although the tourism industry is currently the biggest source of foreign income in Tanzania, it has for many years been concentrating on Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Game Reserves and national parks, while neglecting rock art sites, which in fact, are among the potential tourism attractions. The author acknowledges the contribution of the former in tourism promotion, but innovation is of vital important for rapid development of tourism promotion. This paper explores factors that have made the rock arts of central Tanzania to remain a neglected topic to the general public. It does so together with demonstrating ideas to make Tanzanian rock art sites among the tourist attractions since they have been taken lightly and not realized in tourism promotion for over four decades regardless the fact that the country occupies the largest concentration of rock art in Eastern Africa. Nevertheless, Tanzania occupies the oldest history of human ancestors, which are Zinjanthropus, Homo habilis and Homo erectus. The factors that are keenly looked at, in this study, include protecting the sites from natural disasters, involving people living around the sites in protection measures, building hotels and camps around the sites and educating the general public about the sites. The author of this study believes that there is a need for innovations, not only for tourism promotions but also for proper exploitation of economic resources of the rock art sites to alleviate poverty at least from the family level, especially for people who dwell around these sites. Keywords: rock art, rock paintings, Central Tanzania, promotion, attractions