Uganda Safaris News: Mountain Gorilla Trekking Tours, Wildlife Safari, Primates Tour

By Nakiboneka Halimah
Uganda Safari and Travel News reporter
Kampala Uganda

The Office of Tourism and National Parks in Rwanda (ORTPN) is ready to spend US$570,370 to support community development projects around the national parks. An initiative that will help promote tourism in Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

This is part of its revenue sharing policy where it will collect 5% of the total revenues and give them to community development projects.

 Under the initiative, ORTPN unveiled 21 community projects estimated at $266,666 in the country’s eastern province surrounding the Akagera national park.  

 The ORTPN director general, Ms. Rosette Rugamba said that the projects were realized through the ORTPN revenue sharing policy where 5% of tourism revenues are allocated to community projects. Since 2005 to date, 54 community projects worth $963,703 have been funded.

Among them there are 11 schools with 47 classrooms, three hospitals, two community curio shops, 15 communal water taps and 10 water harvesting tanks as well as seven bridges. It has also funded income generating activities such as bee keeping, mushroom growing and energy saving stones.  

Tourism was ranked the first foreign exchange earner in 2007 registering $137million.

The sector has contributed 3.7% to the country’s GDP and this year, tourism expects to collect $148million from 884,220 tourists.