Linking the splendours of Africa in a network of tourism routes from the Cape to Cairo.
As custodian of most of the world’s animal and plant species and the birthplace of humankind, Africa has great potential to expand its tourism economy. The trouble is that poverty is destroying these resources in the same way that it is ravaging the people of the continent. This is especially so in rural areas, where most of these resources are located. Thus the Open Africa model is aimed at drawing custom to these places, thereby not only to distribute wealth but also to focus the attention of locals on the intrinsic value of their biodiversity and cultural resources to incentive their protection. This reaffirms pride in these assets, which otherwise are regarded as non-productive, and ...
Sobre Você
Dados de Contato
Título
Mr
Nome
Noel
Sobrenome
de Villiers
Your job title
Chief Executive
Nome da sua organização
Open Africa
Organization type
NGO
Orçamento anual/moeda
$500 000
Mailing address
PO Box 44814, Claremont, Cape Town.
Telephone number
+27 21 689 9059
Postal/Zip Code
7735
Country
África do Sul
Website
Endereço de email
Endereço de email alternativo
Alternative email address
Sua ideia
Este será o endereço utilizado para posicionar sua inscrição no mapa.
Street Address
6 Elgin Terrace, Claremont
City
Cape Town
Estado/Província
Western Province
Postal/Zip Code
7708
Country
África do Sul
Geotourism Challenge Addressed by Entrant
Quality of tourist experience and educational benefit to tourists , Quality of benefit to residents for the destination , Quality of tourism management by destination leadership , Quality of stewardship of the destination.
Organization size
Small (1 to 100 employees)
Indicate sector in which you principally work
Community Organization
Year innovation began
1999
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Indicate sector in which you principally work
General destination stewardship/management.
Dê um nome ao seu projeto
Linking the splendours of Africa in a network of tourism routes from the Cape to Cairo.
Descreva Sua Ideia
As custodian of most of the world’s animal and plant species and the birthplace of humankind, Africa has great potential to expand its tourism economy. The trouble is that poverty is destroying these resources in the same way that it is ravaging the people of the continent. This is especially so in rural areas, where most of these resources are located. Thus the Open Africa model is aimed at drawing custom to these places, thereby not only to distribute wealth but also to focus the attention of locals on the intrinsic value of their biodiversity and cultural resources to incentive their protection. This reaffirms pride in these assets, which otherwise are regarded as non-productive, and ...
INOVAÇÃO
What is the goal of your innovation? Please describe in one sentence the kind of impact, change, or reform your approach is intended to achieve.
Creating jobs and expanding biodiversity through mainstreaming rural and marginalised communities and their nature and cultural assets into tourism.
Please write an overview of your project. Include how your approach supports or embodies geotourism or destination stewardship. This text will appear when people scroll over the icon for your entry on the map located on the competition homepage.
As custodian of most of the world’s animal and plant species and the birthplace of humankind, Africa has great potential to expand its tourism economy. The trouble is that poverty is destroying these resources in the same way that it is ravaging the people of the continent. This is especially so in rural areas, where most of these resources are located. Thus the Open Africa model is aimed at drawing custom to these places, thereby not only to distribute wealth but also to focus the attention of locals on the intrinsic value of their biodiversity and cultural resources to incentive their protection. This reaffirms pride in these assets, which otherwise are regarded as non-productive, and encourages stewardship of a sense of place.
Explain in detail why your approach is innovative
Open Africa has developed a systematized and replicable model through which to develop, market, and promote responsible tourism in rural and marginalized areas by creating tourism routes – in effect clusters of operators and attractions. This system rallies all the players in an area around a common vision; collects, collates and presents their details and those of the attractions in the area on a GIS integrated and interactive cutting edge website ( www.openafrica.org ); thereby creating comprehensive authentic area-specific information for travellers whilst putting all the stakeholders into a network that leverages their strengths. Thus it connects tourism products together, connects these products to markets, and connects all the players with knowledge, ideas, and opportunities by networking best practice examples throughout the system. It is more of a movement than a project, in which those who subscribe to it, from donors thru affiliates, tourism and conservation agencies, governments, other NGO’s and route participants are collaborative agents in constructing a societal ecosystem in which they benefit from each others strengths, with Open Africa as the catalyst.
Impacto
Crianças & Jovens
Describe the degree of success you have had to date. How do you measure, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the impact on sustainability or enhancement of local culture, environment, heritage, or aesthetics? How has it transformed or contributed to the power of place or demonstrated the sustainability of tourism? How does your approach minimize negative impacts?
Fifty five routes have been developed so far, with more than 2000 participants in six countries who together employ more than 20 000 people. Each participant has signed a charter, promising adherence to a set of specified values and principles, whilst recently a new innovation has been added and is being introduced to focus on biodiversity. This entails the selection by each route of a flagship species to monitor for conservation purposes. The idea is to stimulate the mainstreaming of biodiversity conservation into tourism and to get communities accustomed to doing this by tracking the condition of one species to start with. Success stories vary from route to route, some heartily encouraging while others are either slow in coming or small in consequence, but always the results are better than would be the case if nothing were done at all. Throughout the process a greater awareness of impacts both negative and positive is being achieved.
Crianças & Jovens
In what ways are local residents actively involved in your work, including participation and community input? How has the community responded to or benefited from your approach?
Nothing is imposed from the outside in this program, which provides a framework within which the local route participants elect their own forum and make all decisions. Ensuring local ownership this way is an essential success factor but does not in itself guarantee success. Communities get media exposure, access to markets, additional traffic flows, an exchange of knowledge through the network together with the warmth of its embrace, so respond enthusiastically to inclusion. But even that doesn’t guarantee success, for there are other constraints to overcome, such as a lack of funds, absence of infrastructure, capacity shortfalls and so on regarding limiting factors common to remote and marginalized areas. These are the challenges the program confronts.
Crianças & Jovens
How does your program promote traveler enthusiasm, satisfaction, and engagement with the locale?
Through direct contact, in which the website plays a major role. Rather than a reservation system, which would not work in these circumstances anyway, the website features each participant’s details together with commentary, photographs and contact addresses and numbers, which can be accessed either from the website or through person to person dialogue. Like the slow food movement, this is tourism with a personal touch, and visitors are encouraged to post comments on the website, which they do with regularity.
Describe how your work helps travelers and local residents better understand the value of the area's cultural and natural heritage, and educates them on local environmental issues.
At the beginning of the route development process the first thing that is done is to identify these features. In their battle for survival communities have forgotten what they are and moreover often don’t realize that they have a value. Thereafter, since they serve as the basis for the route’s existence, awareness about them is heightened considerably, but, in addition, Open Africa employs two route networkers plus a biodiversity networker who move between the routes constantly. These networkers repetitively emphasize the benefits to be gained from conservation.
Temas relacionados à inscrição
SUSTENTABILIDADE
How is your initiative currently financed? If available, provide information on your finances and organization that could help others. Please list: Annual budget, annual revenue generated, size of part-time, full-time and volunteer staff.
Open Africa is exclusively donor dependent and its budget of $500 000 has been steadily increasing annually on the strength of delivering positive results. We employ a full time staff of 10 plus four part time. Travel, one of the largest expenses, militates against utilizing volunteers.
Is your initiative financially and organizationally sustainable? If not, what is required to make it so? Is there a potential demand for your innovation?
To the extent that sustainability is dependent on delivering results we are in good shape, but economic downturns like the present are a threat. Introducing a revenue stream through advertising or a membership fee is an option we would prefer to avoid in the interests of preventing any barriers to entry, but since the service is in demand and more money would mean faster expansion and greater effectiveness, questions about how to improve cash flow are never far from our minds.
What are the main barriers you encounter in managing, implementing, or replicating your innovation? What barriers keep your program from having greater impact?
In an ideal world we would have an endowment fund that takes care of Open Africa’s operating expenses, which are modest in comparison to initiatives with a similar reach. Beyond the hassle the absence of this causes, capacity building among route participants is the biggest challenge. Education levels in rural Africa are generally low, there is a lack of commercial experience, people are unaccustomed to keeping minutes, setting goals, and having business plans, all of which gaps need to be dealt with and filled with patience and through repetition until those involved see the benefits of following good practices.
What is your plan to expand or further develop your approach? Please indicate where/how you would like to grow or enhance your innovation, or have others do so.
In addition to routes already in the process of development and applications for more in the countries in which we presently operate, Mali and Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Burundi and Tanzania are countries from which we have received applications for routes to be developed. This interest poises Open Africa at the threshold of the next step it must take in making its vision for Africa a reality, by structuring the systematized method it has developed in such a way that instead of having to do the implementing ourselves, we will be able to have it done through 'partners' with local knowledge, such as other reputable NGO’s. This will make what is already an extremely cost efficient initiative even more economical whilst also enabling faster expansion.
A História
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers' marketing material.
I regard myself as a recycled businessman, having started out as a commercial entrepreneur who founded Avis in South Africa and eventually switched to becoming a social entrepreneur. In-between I served as a CEO of several companies with transport and travel interests, after which I co-owned Hertz in SA, founded a leasing company, founded SAVRALA (a Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association), and served as deputy chairman of the South African Tourism Board. I am a member of the IUCN's World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA), and was a founder member of the Peace Parks Foundation. I am a member of several advisory boards and was elected an Ashoka Fellow in 2006.
What is the origin of your innovation? Tell the Changemakers and media communities what prompted you to start this initiative.
During 1990, I worried that the general feeling of euphoria over the possibility that South Africa’s political problems could be resolved was masking an even bigger problem both here and elsewhere in Africa, namely that of a need for job creation on a massive scale. With limited options to compete successfully in the traditional sectors of the global economy, I believed that new ways of creating employment had to be found that take account of this continent’s specific circumstances. Tourism was one of the ways to accomplish this, not only because a transition to democracy would improve its potential, but more specifically for the reason that logic dictated that nature-based tourism was likely to grow in inverted proportion to intensification of the global environmental crisis. With this in mind, a think tank of eminent businesspeople, scientists and experts was formed in 1993 to work out a method of creating a replicable system of embracing especially the poor in rural and marginalized areas in this idea, which resulted in the formation of what became Open Africa.
Describe some unique tourist experiences that your approach provides. Be specific; give illustrative examples.
Authenticity seekers, experienced travellers who are interested in interacting with other cultures, enjoy new experiences, want to learn, are adventurous, like the outdoors and have an appreciation for plants and animals make up the segment that take most pleasure from what Open Africa participants have to offer. There are all kinds of attractions and facilities to be found on Open Africa routes, with accommodation ranging from homestays to 5 star luxury lodges. But as the system specifically includes those whose ‘products’ for reasons of remoteness or a lack of cash for advertising would otherwise remain unknown, visitors are assured of not missing anything that may interest them specifically. All routes differ according to local circumstances but, besides spectacular landscapes, wilderness habitats, vast plains, deserts, forests, rivers, waterfalls – your choice of what interests you – here you will see things as they really are. You will also meet people about whom the salt of the earth description is especially apt.
What types of partnerships or professional development would be most beneficial in spreading your innovation?
The closer we work with local government, existing structures and other NGO’s, the better are the results achieved. Generally what we do adds value to existing initiatives, without treading on anyone’s toes or disturbing their sovereignty. Thus we enter into strategic alliances across a wide front and, as strong believers in the power of networking, we utilize this strength through a heavy reliance on Information Technology. Parks departments, conservation agencies, responsible tourism operators and advocates, poverty alleviators, aid agencies, and economic developers are all potential allies with whom we seek mutually beneficial relationships.
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| A smile from Africa.JPG | 238.43 KB |
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| Caprivi Wetlands logo.JPG | 39.4 KB |
| Womanhood sculpture II.JPG | 137.84 KB |
| Drummer.jpg | 136.83 KB |
| Eksteenfontein (30).JPG | 331.19 KB |
| Golden.jpg | 210.99 KB |
| Barotse Trails Background1.JPG | 179.81 KB |
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