There’s no better place to take a photograph of Rosette Chantal Rugamba than on the terrace of the landmark Hotel des Mille Collines by Kempinski in Kigali. It’s easy getting permission for this from the hotel’s management. Rugamba is well-known here and a regular.
The hotel affords a 360-degree view of the city and its splendorous rolling hills. Rugamba, in an orange suit and necklace, views the twinkling lights of Kigali and takes a deep breath of the crisp night air. She has had much to do with this vision of the city.
Twelve years ago, she was appointed Rwanda’s tourism head by the country’s president Paul Kagame tasked with turning around the country’s tourism infrastructure.
She had never lived in Rwanda before that. Her parents had fled the country to Uganda in 1959 and she grew up as a refugee with her seven siblings. Her parents never let them forget they were Rwandan first. The children were encouraged to learn French and culturally attuned to their country’s traditions. Be it books, music or dance, their home reverberated with Rwandan nuances, as the family lived on hope they would one day return home.
Her father was a brewer and her mother a teacher, but their humble home was always open to fellow Rwandans.
“There was always plenty of food,” recalls Rugamba. “And if you had to roll out a hundred mattresses, so be it.”
As her parents’ first-born, there was pressure on her to perform – and excel. She studied political science at university in Uganda. She married Henry, an Ugandan, and thereafter moved to London. Her husband worked for the British telecom industry, while she started her career with Harrods as a customer services manager. Today, she lauds herself for having been among the team that launched the first Harrods store at Terminal 3 in Heathrow airport. Yet another milestone: she was “among the 100 people” who started Eurostar.
“I am the sort of person who always wants to start things,” says Rugamba. Although she was settling well in the United Kingdom, in her heart, she recalled the songs of Rwanda, the songs of its flowing rivers and rolling hills.
In 1984, she decided to “risk a trip” to Rwanda, which was still in the throes of the liberation struggle.
“I wanted to experience the country and so toured it for the first time. I was satisfied but not sure if I would ever see it again.”
In 1996, Rugamba joined British Airways as its sales and marketing manager for East Africa, and she subsequently moved to Uganda. Rwanda’s horrific 1994 genocide was still fresh on her mind.
“We used to do a lot of fund-raising for the people and the soldiers. My mom’s family was completely wiped out.”
In 2002, she received a call from Kagame, asking her to return to her homeland. At the time, things looked positive for Rwanda.
“I asked myself ‘what value can I add?’. I am eternally grateful to the President that he unleashed the potential I never knew I had.”
Kagame wanted her to raise Rwanda’s profile through tourism and turn it into an engine for economic change in the country.
“The brief I got from him was ‘make sure every tourism dollar is spent in the country’,” says Rugamba.
When she took over as the Director General of Tourism and National Parks in January 2003, she was six months pregnant and a newcomer in her own homeland.
“The tasks in front of me were huge. I was coming back to a country I had never lived in and tasked with tourism in a country that had never known it. I felt like a tourist in my own country,” she says.
Yet, she embarked on the job with passion.
“The country was embedded in me. I was so excited that for the first time I was given a Rwandan passport, the one given to government officials but one that came with responsibility. It actually meant I was now a part of the transformation of the country.”
It also came with personal sacrifice – for a while. She came to Rwanda leaving her family behind in Uganda.
“My husband said ‘you go, we will be fine, you are getting a chance to serve your country, we can manage’. Women can’t do it without the support of men,” says Rugamba.
The first thing she did on the job was getting on the radio every Sunday at 3PM, talking about the country’s tourism potential and the role Rwandans would play.
“Tourism is multi-faceted and for it to succeed, the masses needed to be involved. We had to get the coffee, tea and ICT sectors as well to support it.”
Her mandate was to grow the tourism numbers, build restaurants and hotels, and offer tourists local handicrafts and every reason to visit Rwanda.
“Rwandans are very patriotic and they linked [tourism] to the visionary leader they loved so much. Until then, everyone only knew Rwanda for the 2Gs: the genocide and gorillas. It was time to showcase whatever else Rwanda had to offer.”
Tasked with reinvigorating tourism in the ‘Land of the Thousand Hills’, for the next seven years, Rugamba reoriented the sector putting in place new policies and strategic master plans. She launched the country internationally with a new pitch: ‘Rwanda – the new dawn of Africa’.
“I was so determined to sell the vision. I went to the [East Africa] region, gathered the tour operators and brought them here. The target was high-end eco-tourism.”
Eugene Rutagarama, who as the Country Director of IGCP (International Gorilla Conservation Programme) worked closely with Rugamba for eight years, extols her ability to tackle problems and take a stand on tough issues.
“Rosette Rugamba is an energetic person, an inspiring leader to her peers and to any person who happens to know her well. I was always impressed by her innovative approach to complex situations and her strong desire to reach a high level of accomplishment,” he recalls.
In time, her efforts paid off.
By the time Rugamba stepped down in 2010, tourism had become Rwanda’s top foreign-exchange earner. The tourism master plan for Rwanda’s Vision 2020 had been laid out, and the country was a stand-alone destination in the East African bloc.
In 2003, when she took on the job, tourist numbers in Rwanda were a mere 13,000. When she left in 2010, that figure had risen to 790,000.
In 2013, Rwanda had 1,137,000 visitors and tourism generated $293.6 million. The number of hotel rooms in the country has risen to 8,417. It was 650 when Rugamba started in 2003. To accommodate the demand, the current airport has recently been expanded and a new airport is being built in Bugasera.
It was time for Rugamba to find a new challenge.
“I saw what tourism could do for Rwanda. I wanted to do the same for Africa. My vision is to go everywhere,” she says.
She chose to turn entrepreneur, starting Songa Africa, a luxury tour company focusing on sustainable tourism.
“There was room for an indigenous luxury tour company headed by a woman. I had the passion, local knowledge and appreciation of the luxury clientele. I started with an old laptop and a contact book, but with a vision.”
In March, her company completes five years. She admits to having international celebrities, presidents, film stars and media moguls as clients. She has been consistently recognized as one of East Africa’s leading tourism and conservation strategists.
“What happened to me is magical,” she says.
Rugamba’s company is launching its first custom-built luxury eco-lodge in March and will be rolling out three five-star lodges to the tune of $5.5 million. Her company is also getting into conference tourism in line with Rwanda’s strategy to position itself as a business destination.
All this has meant extensive travel for Rugamba.
“Oh my goodness! I have hardly been in the country these last three months,” she says. But wherever she goes, all roads lead her back home to Rwanda.

Rosette-Rugamba_2037

Harrods, Heathrow, Home

There’s no better place to take a photograph of Rosette Chantal Rugamba than on the terrace of the landmark Hotel des Mille Collines by Kempinski in Kigali. It’s easy getting permission for this from the hotel’s management. Rugamba is well-known here and a regular.
The hotel affords a 360-degree view of the city and its splendorous rolling hills. Rugamba, in an orange suit and matching necklace, views the twinkling lights of Kigali and takes a deep breath of the crisp night air. She has had much to do with this vision of the city.
Twelve years ago, she was appointed Rwanda’s tourism head by the country’s president, Paul Kagame, and tasked with turning around the country’s tourism infrastructure.
She had never lived in Rwanda before that. Her parents had fled the country to Uganda in 1959 and she grew up as a refugee with her seven siblings. Her parents never let them forget they were Rwandan first. The children were encouraged to learn French and culturally attuned to their country’s traditions. Be it books, music or dance, their home reverberated with Rwandan nuances, as the family lived on hope they would one day return home.
Her father was a brewer and her mother a teacher, but their humble home was always open to fellow Rwandans.
“There was always plenty of food,” recalls Rugamba. “And if you had to roll out a hundred mattresses, so be it.”
As her parents’ first-born, there was pressure on her to perform – and excel. She studied political science at university in Uganda. She married Henry, an Ugandan, and thereafter moved to London. Her husband worked for the British telecom industry, while she started her career with Harrods as a customer services manager. Today, she lauds herself for having been among the team that launched the first Harrods store at Terminal 3 in Heathrow airport. Yet another milestone: she was “among the 100 people” who started Eurostar.
“I am the sort of person who always wants to start things,” says Rugamba.
Although she was settling well in Britain, in her heart, she recalled the songs of Rwanda, the songs on its flowing rivers and rolling hills.
In 1984, she decided to ‘risk a trip’ to Rwanda, which was still in the throes of the liberation struggle.
“I wanted to experience the country and so toured it for the first time. I was satisfied but not sure if I would ever see it again.”
In 1996, Rugamba joined British Airways as its sales and marketing manager for East Africa, and she subsequently moved to Uganda. Rwanda’s horrific 1994 genocide was still fresh on her mind.
“We used to do a lot of fundraising for the people and the soldiers. My mom’s family was completely wiped out,” says Rugamba.
In 2002, she received a call from Kagame, asking her to return to her homeland. At the time, things looked positive for Rwanda.
“I asked myself ‘what value can I add?’. I am eternally grateful to the President that he unleashed the potential I never knew I had.”
Kagame wanted her to raise Rwanda’s profile through tourism and turn it into an engine for economic change in the country.
“The brief I got from him was ‘make sure every tourism dollar is spent in the country,’” says Rugamba.
When she took over as the Director General of Tourism and National Parks in January 2003, she was six months pregnant and a newcomer in her own homeland.
“The tasks in front of me were huge. I was coming back to a country I had never lived in and tasked with tourism in a country that had never known it. I felt like a tourist in my own country,” she says.
She embarked on the job with passion.
“The country was embedded in me. I was so excited that for the first time I was given a Rwandan passport, the one given to government officials but one that came with responsibility. It actually meant I was now a part of the transformation of the country.”
It also came with personal sacrifice – for a while. She came to Rwanda leaving her family behind in Uganda.
“My husband said ‘you go, we will be fine, you are getting a chance to serve your country, we can manage’. Women can’t do it without the support of men,” says Rugamba.
The first thing she did was get on the radio every Sunday at 3PM, talking about the country’s tourism potential and the role Rwandans would play.
“Tourism is multi-faceted and for it to succeed, the masses needed to be involved. We had to get the coffee, tea and ICT sectors as well to support it.”
Her mandate was to grow the tourism numbers, build restaurants and hotels, and offer tourists local handicrafts and every reason to visit Rwanda.
“Rwandans are very patriotic and they linked [tourism] to the visionary leader they loved so much. Until then, everyone only knew Rwanda for the 2Gs: the genocide and gorillas. It was time to showcase whatever else Rwanda had to offer,” says Rugamba.
Tasked with reinvigorating tourism in the ‘Land of the Thousand Hills’, for the next seven years, she reoriented the sector putting in place new policies and strategic master plans. She launched the country internationally with a new pitch: ‘Rwanda – the new dawn of Africa’.
“I was so determined to sell the vision. I went to the [East Africa] region, gathered the tour operators and brought them here. The target was high-end eco-tourism.”
Eugene Rutagarama, who as the Country Director of IGCP (International Gorilla Conservation Programme) worked closely with Rugamba for eight years, extols her ability to tackle problems and take a stand on tough issues.
“Rosette Rugamba is an energetic person, an inspiring leader to her peers and to any person who happens to know her well. I was always impressed by her innovative approach to complex situations and her strong desire to reach a high level of accomplishment,” he recalls.
Her efforts paid off.
By the time Rugamba stepped down in 2010, tourism had become Rwanda’s top foreign-exchange earner. The tourism master plan for Rwanda’s Vision 2020 had been laid out, and the country was a stand-alone destination in the East African bloc.
In 2003, when she took on the job, tourist numbers in Rwanda were a mere 13,000. When she left in 2010, that figure had risen to 790,000.
In 2013, Rwanda had more than 1.1 million visitors and tourism generated $293.6 million. The number of hotel rooms in the country has risen to 8,417. It was 650 when Rugamba started. To accommodate the demand, the current airport has recently been expanded and a new airport is being built in Bugasera.
It was time for Rugamba to find a new challenge.
“I saw what tourism could do for Rwanda. I wanted to do the same for Africa. My vision is to go everywhere,”
she says.
She chose to turn entrepreneur, starting Songa Africa, a luxury tour company focusing on sustainable tourism.
“There was room for an indigenous luxury tour company headed by a woman. I had the passion, local knowledge and appreciation of the luxury clientele. I started with an old laptop and a contact book, but with a vision.”
In March, her company completes five years. She admits to having international celebrities, presidents, film stars and media moguls as clients. She has been consistently recognized as one of East Africa’s leading tourism and conservation strategists.
“What happened to me is magical,” she says.
Rugamba’s company is launching its first custom-built luxury eco-lodge in March and will be rolling out three five-star lodges to the tune of $5.5 million. Her company is also getting into conference tourism in line with Rwanda’s strategy to position itself as a business destination.
All this has meant extensive travel for Rugamba.
“Oh my goodness, I have hardly been in the country these last three months,” she says. But wherever she goes, all roads lead her back home to Rwanda.

Harrods, Heathrow,  Home

Africa was regarded the last frontier for adventure and exploration during the colonial rule. Today, it’s the polar seas, the Arctic and the Antarctic, that have not been invaded by mass tourism – yet.
Only a few years ago, it was daunting to travel to its far reaches, but today, for a hefty sum, one can step on the North Pole or South Pole – and proudly proclaim oneself an adventure tourist.
The land of the midnight sun offers some of the most scenic and finest wildlife experiences in the world. The most accessible parts of the Arctic are the seas between northern Canada, Greenland and the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. Thanks to modern travel, one can fly from Oslo to Longyearbyen, the largest settlement in Svalbard in Norway, by commercial jet and then approach 80 degrees N latitude by ice class ships, which offer adventure tourists some of the most magnificent vistas of the polar world.
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With glaciers and ice caps covering 24,000 square miles, Svalbard is one of the largest glaciated areas in the Arctic with 2,100 named glaciers. In comparison, the Himalayas only have 380 glaciers. The climate in the Arctic is currently warming at a faster rate than observed elsewhere on earth and future projections suggest that in 60 years, there may be no glaciers left.
Polar travel can be daunting, exhilarating and often disappointing, primarily due to unpredictable weather conditions. Like the weather, spotting wildlife can also be a hit or miss, depending on how lucky you are.
&nbsp;
Trekking The Tundra
My polar adventure began the moment I boarded the Russian registered expedition ship, Akademik Sergey Vavilov, in Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen. I had traveled on this same ship to Antarctica two years ago. It’s an ice class vessel capable of cutting through loose floes (sheets of floating ice).
The Arctic Ocean is a frozen landmass that extends across six million square miles in winter and drops to 145,000 square miles in summer. There is increasing evidence that it has shrunk over the past few years. The rigid ice cap is sometimes 50 feet thick. When it melts, it creates floes and icebergs that can block shipping lanes – remember how the Titanic sank?
The 70-odd passengers in the vessel with me embarked on daily boat expeditions, 10 per boat, to visit bird cliffs, track polar bears and walruses, land on isolated beaches or enjoy tundra walks of up to three miles. In doing so, we observed polar bears feasting on seals, pods of walruses on the beaches, cliffs with over 500,000 birds and rare arctic foxes. Trekking on the tundra, a frozen, barren land, with only peat and moss growing for months in a year, provided me a unique perspective on the ecology of the arctic lands.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29766 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Photo-3-300x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Photo-3-300x300.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Photo-3-100x100.jpg 100w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Photo-3-600x600.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Photo-3-150x150.jpg 150w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Photo-3-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Photo-3.jpg 945w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
The tundra supports herbivores like reindeers that graze for two months to build enough reserves for the entire winter. There are over 120 species of arctic flowers amongst the 1,700 species of plant life.
Any visit to the Arctic is not complete without spotting a polar bear. The polar bear habitat encompasses the entire circumpolar Arctic region. Their main habitat is on offshore pack ice, and along coasts and islands of the Arctic region. Over 40% of all polar bears live in Northern Canada, on pack ice and along the shores of the many islands there. Bears will remain in this ice pack habitat all year. It is estimated that over 3,400 bears live in the Svalbard area.
The vast tundra, the glacial rivers of ice, animals on the brink of extinction due to global warming, and rich oceans where over 25 humpback whales feed all around the ship, are all experiences one can never forget. The camaraderie of an international group of passengers makes the trip even more enjoyable.

Photo-2

Polar Bears And Rivers Of ice

We started from the bottom; now we’re here,” says Johanna Mukoki, quoting popular artist Drake. She has hobnobbed with the musician on a visit to the United States, but his lyrics hit closer to home.
Mukoki, who owns Travel With Flair, a top South African tourism company, vividly remembers her years of struggle as a young girl running a rickety Soweto stall with nothing but hope and dreams for a better future.
Baragwanath is South Africa’s biggest public hospital and has its place etched in history as the apartheid era’s ‘black hospital’. Bara sprawls lazily across Soweto and is connected to Soweto’s taxi rank by the ‘Bara Bridge’. Almost 40 years ago, in the sea of human traffic from the taxi rank to the hospital, Mukoki stood, just legs and bones, with a smile, beckoning passersby to try a boiled egg, an apple or any of the edible fare on offer in her little stall.
Seated face-to-face with Mukoki now, it is difficult to imagine her that way on Bara Bridge. Today, she laughs at the incredulity of it.
“When I drive past Bara in my Porsche, I’m reminded of my blessings. That’s where I come from.”
She has an irrepressible get-up-and-go attitude about her. As she talks, her hands animate her words.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29704 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5019-290x300.jpg" alt="" width="290" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5019-290x300.jpg 290w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5019-300x310.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5019-600x620.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_5019.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 290px) 100vw, 290px" />
We talk about her childhood, and her moeder (Afrikaans for mother) and father come to life. Their influence in the cultivation of her entrepreneurial flair dominates her story-telling.
Her mother was a teacher who she thinks was “probably a business tycoon in her previous life”. Outside of classroom hours, she ensured Mukoki manned the stall at Bara Bridge but it didn’t end there. At the end of each month, with swathes of brightly-colored, newly-sewn curtains, folded with meticulous precision, Mukoki would have to expertly balance the curtains on her head and accompany her mother to Qwa-Qwa to sell the designs.
Her father, on the other hand, made sure she focused on maintaining her straight As in school. Books connected father and daughter.
“Papa made sure that I read white people’s books even in poor and dusty Soweto. We knew that education was the only way out of this poverty thing.”
Her laughter fills the room as she recounts her obsession with saving every cent of her pay on the family business but went about it the wrong way.
“I used to hide my coins under the vinyl tiles in the kitchen. Problem with that was that as people walked over my secret vault, the shape of the coins would become increasingly pronounced…and my balance would somehow start falling.” The qualified accountant knows better now.
From coins under vinyl tiles to holding her own amongst billionaires, kings and queens, to rock stars, Mukoki has certainly arrived. She counts amongst her friends and mentors the late Nelson Mandela, Bono, Sol Kerzner, Bill Clinton, Stephen Kosseff…the list is endless.
The journey from the bottom to now wasn’t a joy ride by any means.
It’s fragile ground as we broach her
biggest setback.
It happened in 2006, when the phone rang just as she stepped into her office. It was a frantic call from Moeder.
“Jo, you have to get me out of here or else I’m not going to make it,” she said. Her mother was in Cape Town and had gone in for a routine health checkup, albeit in the care of doctors she wasn’t familiar with. And she was reacting negatively to the medication prescribed to her. Mukoki and her siblings worked round the clock to get their mother checked out and readmitted to another hospital.
“Bureaucracy failed us. We had to fight for hours before she was released.” It was too late. Within hours, Moeder was gone.
“I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut,” says Mukoki. She had to learn to survive without Moeder, there was no other way to deal with it.
“I wanted to fight. I want to sue everyone involved. It took my family to help me accept the victory in walking away.” It has been a long journey for Mukoki since.
Today, she has been leading the tourism company she co-founded, Travel With Flair, in Johannesburg, for more than 18 years. Their wings have spread, pushing past South Africa’s borders and venturing into Africa. Her team has grown relentlessly. She now has 650 employees; 80% are women. Mukoki has won several trophies and awards along the way. She has also recently joined a global alliance which gives her company greater exposure.
“We started from the bottom;
now we’re here!” she says, quoting
Drake again.

IMG_0744

From Bara Bridge To The Boardroom

It has since dawned on some in the tourism industry that unless they use their stature and influence to lobby their governments to do more to protect the species and by extension, their business, they stand to lose out. Their argument is that if there are no rhinos to see, they cannot sell the Big Five to potential tourists.
The world’s most powerful women should be getting into something that some might say is not exactly their business: the physical, emotional and sexual abuse of women less powerful than themselves.
There are businesswomen’s associations that help to fund halfway stations where women recovering from or fleeing their abusive partners can learn business principles that can help them be independent once they leave their tormentors. Such associations should lobby their governments to improve conditions of girls and women and tighten punitive measures for those who hurt, abuse and marginalize women.
The logic is simple. The more women do not need to depend on men, the less they will tolerate abusive men. The more women there are in business, especially if they are confident in their femininity, the greater the chances of the feminine motif becoming the norm in the business world and in the executive suite.
It is not enough to assume that being a woman means you can understand the plight of a woman in an abusive relationship. Even if you did, unless there are programs in place in your  business that recognize the debilitating effects of patriarchy on productive capacity and therefore the bottom line, you are no better than those who see or hear no evil.
I am not holding my breath that business is ready for such a leap of faith in the interest of abused women and marginalized girls. Far too many still go with the logic that the business of business is business. Everything else is someone else’s business – the preacher, the teacher or the politician.
I continue hearing about how women boast about what they have had to go through, implying that others who want to attain the same status must also grin, bear and get on with it. And still some insist that having a female boss is better for one’s self-worth.
I don’t know if it is just me, but one hardly sees powerful women – except in their capacity as government officials or public representatives – become champions of the anti-woman abuse movement. The rest of the time, it is the less glamorous women in non-governmental organizations, academia or in the arts, who are left to make the big deal of this social scourge and drain to the economy.
It seems to me that powerful women do not want to risk their power reputation by associating themselves with what they might see as being weak or the doormat at home.
I can see why some women would not want to contaminate their reputation as tough task masters who drive a hard bargain by confessing to have been pushed around like British TV personality Nigella Lawson. But it is the recognition that there are many other Nigellas and that businesswomen’s associations can become socially relevant and inspirational to the women who do not yet own a power suit or have not yet been invited for high tea.
There is also the economic impact of women who are prevented from earning a living and being financially independent by abusive partners, or who are forced to divert their earnings into areas that are not as productive as they could have been.
Women should not be forced to buy make-up only if the intention is to hide the marks and scars on their faces if they could be investing that money into areas that grow their wealth and independence.
There is also the denialism in the top echelons of business that makes top businesswomen or executives pretend that abuse is only suffered by others with a less net worth than themselves or who hold mundane jobs.
Some may say that I am blaming the victim by not addressing the patriarchal power that places women in these situations. Perhaps I am. What is clear to me though is that it is those who feel and have known the discomfort of a stone in the shoe, who are best placed to remove the stone. Demanding that whoever placed the stone there remove it, might slow you down.
The stories we hear about women needing to juggle being wives, partners, parents and business executives should not be used as a demand for sympathy or a self-pat on the back. It should be a catalyst for change that is driven by those who understand the pain and unnecessary hurdles it has brought and ensure it does not happen to other women.

Get The Stone Out Of Your Shoe

From the heart of the Lower Zambezi National Park hundreds of miles from a town or on the streets of Lusaka, the name Mark O’Donnell is as common in Zambia as the Victoria Falls or Mosi Beer. On the streets they call him the Mall Man; the Zambian who made his fortune building places to stay and shop. In business, he is known as a ruthless strategist who wants to make money and cannot make it fast enough.
“Zambia is a small market but it’s a growing one, at six to seven percent a year, for the past 14 years. The economy of the country has grown much bigger. We’ve been fortunate to make investments when the time was appropriate… we just wanted to build a shopping mall,” says O’Donnell.
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O’Donnell is a born and bred Zambian and has walked a meandering path to riches.  At 18, O’Donnell was selling auto parts for someone else. But he dreamed of being an entrepreneur. Times were tough in the 1980s, when private money struggled in a socialist state run under tight regulations. Strangely, at a time when there was little to buy, he thought that malls could be just what Zambia needed.
“It was very difficult to do anything in Zambia. Ninety percent of the country was controlled by the state. You would drive around in Lusaka and all you would see were queues of people lining up to buy whatever commodities were in the stores. There were a lot of hardships,” he says.
This hardship led to riots and ushered out the 27 years of power for Zambia’s president Kenneth Kaunda and its policy of control. Frederick Chiluba led his Movement for Multiparty Democracy in the elections in 1991 on a ticket of free enterprise. Despite the freeing of the economy for private business, things got worse for O’Donnell. Private business was shrinking by the day.
“In the 1990s, business was pretty bleak. We were just plain contractors at that point, and we were just trying to find work. It was almost impossible to get regular types of work, so we had to be innovative. We had to figure out how we were going to make projects. So we went and designed our own projects,” he says.
O’Donnell decided to build a mall to keep his business running. Despite his fears, the Arcades Shopping Centre was built in 2003 and brought in a number of South African franchises, putting Zambia on the map for investment.
“Many people wondered why we were building a shopping mall when the market seemed like it was struggling,” he says.
It brought fame to the farthest reaches of the country, even to the far flung bush of the Lower Zambezi National Park. Hundreds of kilometers away, Joshua Chizuwa, who has been a game ranger for more than 40 years, has heard of him.
“I used to work as a construction worker for him during breaks from the bush a long time ago. O’Donnell was as a hard businessman, ruthless in his deals. I have seen his buildings rise and Lusaka has grown from his ventures. He’s changed the face of Lusaka,” says Chizuwa.
According to Trevor Simumba, a Zambian-born managing director of the Sub-Saharan Consulting Group, within Lusaka O’Donnell is regarded as a progressive businessman who saw the liberalization policies of the MMD in the nineties as an opportunity rather than a challenge.
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“He was very helpful to me when I was starting my career in the consulting field. At one point during a very difficult career transition, Mark said to me ‘Trevor it is always darkest before dawn’. This simple but profound statement helped me through and I always tell myself that whenever I face a challenge. Zambia is privileged to have Mark doing his business in Zambia. We need more role models like this in business in Zambia,” says Simumba.
O’Donnell also went into the hotel industry. It was a failed game lodge that saw O’Donnell go big. He negotiated a deal with Africa’s largest hotel group, Protea Hotels, a chain that has been targeted by Marriott International.
The first hotel O’Donnell built was in Chingola, in northern Zambia’s rich Copperbelt Province. He says it was a disaster.
“We opened it in the same week that Anglo American pulled out of Zambia. It wasn’t the best start to a hotel chain. There was zero occupancy for a couple of years,” he says.
It has taken 13 years of fighting back to expand seven more hotels. He is currently building his eighth in Lusaka, next door to his mall.
As the largest owner of hotels in Zambia it makes sense that O’Donnell wants tourism to boom. Until recently, he has been critical of the government’s efforts to encourage visitors. Tourism currently accounts for a mere 2% of Zambia’s gross domestic product. In August, the government announced a turnaround strategy to increase this to 7% in line with neighboring Zimbabwe. It has won over O’Donnell.
“You are talking about an industry that needs to double in size over the next five to 10 years. Our current arrivals are about 900,000 a year. If we take out non-tourist visits, we are probably looking at 300,000 tourists. I think what we would like to see that number grow to about 600,000 high spending visitors. We need to increase the visit to arrivals in Zambia. That’s our first priority. To raise Zambia’s profile in the key source markets and increase interest to come into Zambia either through leisure tourism or for business travel. Certainly both components have interest,” says O’Donnell.
Tourism in Zambia is difficult. O’Donnell says a ban on Zambian aircraft by the European Union (EU) has discouraged North Americans and Europeans.
“The agents won’t book internal flights due to insurance reasons. It’s purely to do with some technicalities that the EU won’t deal with, with our civil aviation authorities,” he says.
But his greatest challenge lies with Zambia’s marketing. According to O’Donnell, 60% of wealthy foreigners in North America, Asia and Europe have never heard of Zambia.
“Our customers demand a high quality sort of product. Just because this is Africa it doesn’t mean you can’t offer top class products to the market. Zambia is generally unspoilt, an environment untouched by commercialization. In some places in Africa you would find 20 minibuses around a lion, this doesn’t happen in Zambia. You can’t compare what we have with London and New York, but you have something different,” he says.
In a city that was little more than dirt roads, O’Donnell had a dream that many struggled to envision. Where people queued for hours to get their hands on commodities he saw malls with refrigerators. Today, O’Donnell’s buildings run alongside tarred roads and Zambians are eager to see what his next dream will be.

The Mall King And His New Toys

The picturesque Republic of The Gambia is covered with beach resorts and more than 300 species of birdlife. It’s one of Africa’s smallest countries and is surrounded by Senegal and the North Atlantic Ocean. The former British colony gained independence on February 18, 1965. Incumbent president, Yahya Jammeh, led a successful, bloodless military coup in 1994 and has been in power since winning the elections in 1996. Each term is five years and the constitution has no restriction on the number of terms allowed.
The country has few natural resource deposits and is heavily reliant on foreign aid. A third of the population depends on the agricultural sector, with one sixth of the country’s land being arable, and tourism is big due to its ecosystems, white beaches and close proximity to Europe.
The country wants to become West Africa’s regional center for processing, manufacturing, assembly and distribution. Currently a low income country, it wants to reach middle income status by 2020, using its Vision 2020 master plan.
It’s currently a net importer—exporting peanut products, cotton lint, palm kernels and fish, while importing foodstuffs, fuel, machinery and transport equipment. The majority of the country’s exports consist of re-exports to other African countries.
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While its human rights record is poor, The Gambia’s contractionary monetary and fiscal policies from late 2003 restored macroeconomic stability after inflation rose to a two-decade high of 17% in 2003—following uncontrolled and unbudgeted expenditures, a decline in tax revenue, a rise in domestic debt and a drought.
The general economic growth outlook for 2013 seems to be positive.
The country began to rebound in 2012; real GDP grew from -4.0% in 2011 to 6%. Growth is expected to continue on the back of recovery in the agricultural and tourism sectors. Inflation has remained in the single digits and is projected to climb to the central bank target of 5%.
The country suffered an agricultural harvest failure in 2011 and implemented the Program for Accelerated Growth and Employment (PAGE) 2012-2013, a new poverty reduction strategy. It takes 27 days to start a new business and the country has now dropped four places in the ease of doing business rankings, to sit at 147. It also ranks at 165 on the Human Development Index.
The Gambian financial system has evolved over the last several years, and is now liberalized. The country has moved to an indirect system of monetary controls using open market operations, increasing competition in the domestic financial system.
Treasury Bill yields are between 12.6% and 16.09% per annum.
Earlier this year, The Gambia introduced a 15% VAT. This led to some confusion among the locals and sharp increases in prices. These increases were also seen in non-taxable items such as rice and sugar. The introduction of the VAT is in compliance with ECOWAS’s tax reforms for its member states.
Structural changes have been made in the country and there are a number of projects underway. The government wants to find ways of enhancing domestic participation in mineral exploitation, improving education and improving infrastructure.

From A Coup  To A Rosy View

The French-speaking country, perched on the western tip of the continent, boasts one of the best developed tourist industries in Africa, with six major game parks and reserves. Senegal is home to nearly 13 million people and has remained stable even as neighbors Mali and Guinea and nearby Côte d’Ivoire suffered military coups and political upheavals.
But Senegal had its share of political violence in January 2012. Dakar burnt when the constitutional court allowed incumbent Abdoulaye Wade to seek a third term in office. The 85-year-old’s decision violated the country’s constitution; protestors set fire to large parts of the city. In the end, Wade was defeated by Macky Sall.
In June, on his first official visit to Sub-Saharan Africa, United States President, Barack Obama, visited Senegal to strengthen business relations and encourage investment. Obama’s visit recognized the United States’ commitment to democracy, in a region where dictators and civil strife are common.
A few weeks later, in July, rating agency, Standard and Poor’s (S&amp;P) revised Senegal’s sovereign credit rating outlook to stable from negative. S&amp;P believes the Senegalese government will succeed in cutting its fiscal deficit and carrying out reforms that will lead to faster economic growth. Moody’s Investor Services rated the West African nation B1, before its planned sale of $500 million of Eurobonds in 2011. Moody’s rating is equal to the B+ rating by S&amp;P, along with Nigeria, Kenya, Mozambique and Zimbabwe to name a few.
Senegal earns most of its foreign exchange from fish, groundnuts, phosphates, tourism and services. The phosphate industry has struggled for two years to secure capital and its reduced output has hurt GDP.
In 2007, Senegal signed agreements with foreign companies for new mining concessions for iron, zircon and gold. Various foreign investors have agreed to modernize Dakar’s port and create a new special economic zone.
Its agricultural sector is subject to rainfall and changes in world commodity prices. Following droughts that cut agricultural output in 2011, the West African nation’s economic growth is expected to accelerate this year. According to a Reuters poll, Senegal’s GDP should expand to 4.4%; the International Monetary Fund (IMF) hopes the completion of infrastructure projects, recovery in its agricultural sector and mining projects will boost it further.
The IMF also expects Senegal’s current account deficit to decline, but remains fearful it could go high because of imports associated with investments in the energy and mining sectors. In September, the IMF urged the Senegalese government to maintain its budget deficit target—expected to be reduced to less than 5% of GDP this year—in order to ensure fiscal sustainability.
Senegal relies heavily on donor assistance and foreign direct investment, which in 2000 represented around 32% of overall government spending. Under the IMF’s Heavily Indebted Poor Countries debt relief program, Senegal will benefit from eradication of two-thirds of its bilateral, multilateral and private sector debt.
The country rose from the ashes through an economic reform program following its economy’s contraction by 2.1% in 1993. A year later, with the help of the international donor community, Senegal began a 50% devaluation of the country’s currency; government price controls and subsidies were steadily dismantled. It made for a real turnaround with a real GDP averaging over 5% annually over a decade. Annual inflation was pushed down to low single digits.
Following the country’s 2012 growth at an estimated 3.7%. The African Development Bank (AfDB) believes that growth will accelerate this year and is projected at 5.1% in 2014. AfDB says the growth projections are calculated in the hope that the government’s socio-economic program will be implemented along with the continuation of a toll motorway, the construction of Blaise Diagne International Airport, which is expected to handle around 10 million passengers by 2020, and other infrastructure projects.
Dakar, the melting pot capital city, is one of the busiest cruise ship ports in Africa and is home to around 1.5 million people. It’s impossible to miss the imposing Monument of the African Renaissance statue, when in the capital. As the tallest statue on the continent it stands at 49 meters on one of the twin hills, known as Collines des Mamelles.
Just off of Dakar’s coast is Ile de Gorée—the small island is a big tourist attraction because of its history as a slave trading port.
Dakar also lends its name to the Paris-Dakar rally, which was established after Thierry Sabine got lost on his motorbike in the Tenere Desert during the Abidjan-Nice Rally, in 1977. He came up with a new route starting in Europe through Algiers, in Algeria, crossing Agadez, in Niger, before finishing in Dakar. Most rallies took this route, until security threats in Mauritania forced organizers to cancel the 2008 rally. The following year it moved to South America and has stayed there.
As a member of the West African Economic and Monetary Union, Senegal is working towards greater regional integration with a unified external tariff and a more stable monetary policy.
The economy continues to suffer from an unreliable power supply, with widespread blackouts in 2006, 2007 and 2011, which led to public protests and unemployment. The government is working hard to solve the problem. High unemployment forces many to flee the country in search of jobs.
The country is one of the few on the continent to have issued a Eurobond, that is debt issued in a currency other than the that of the country or market in which it is issued. Eurobonds are attractive to investors because of their small par values and high liquidity. Senegal issued a $500 million 10-year Eurobond in May 2011 at a coupon of 8.75%, to raise funds to improve infrastructure.
In June, Reuters said the country is likely to issue another $500 million 10-year Eurobond this year at an interest rate of around 6%. The IMF said the bond would help the country close its financing gap and reduce its reliance on costly short-term financing from the regional market.

Ashes To Eurobond

It shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with the ethno-cultural dynamics of tipple in West Africa that what you expect to see in a bottle isn’t always what you get to drink. This is especially so with wines. So let me now welcome you to the ‘social viticulture’ of West Africa. The agronomical version of this ‘culture’ doesn’t
exist around here. Grapes, you see, don’t do too well in desert or near-desert heat.
The bottle could, for instance, contain palm wine, the very affordable, hugely popular brew tapped from the trunk of the tropical palm tree and best consumed from a drinking gourd. The sweet-and-sour milky draught reputedly has prophylactic properties. Over the last 20 years, several entrepreneurial attempts to commercialize, commodify and transform this indigenous beverage into a bottled retail product have failed. Its fermented variant is an acidic, bitter brew best avoided by those who seek to protect their social reputations and their health. Urban and rural folk living anywhere between Liberia, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria and Cameroon refer to it as the ‘toxic tantalizer’.
Wine could also mean bottled fruit juice, sweet and sparkling, best served chilled and for those who lead ‘alcohol-free lives’ or love any colored fizzy stuff.
And of course, wine could mean ‘foreign wine’, the grapey drink from the vineyards of the world’s wine-growing regions. How French, German, Spanish, Swiss and Flemish wineries made the palm wine- producing belts of West Africa (and South America) and the rest of the world their target market is another story, for another day. It’s safe to say, though, that the spirit of the UN is actively in charge of proceedings in most wine shops worldwide. In West African shops and supermarkets, as elsewhere, wines from the ‘New World’ jostle for space with the ‘Old World’ wines.
Of course, the African Union member states don’t—or can’t—say much. As keen members of the international consumers’ club, they can only observe the fare as they ponder their growing affection for imported wine and its intended effect on their trade balances and fiscal positions. South Africa (the only wine producer in the AU) coughs up a tipple point once in a while, and let me reveal that the wines from South Africa are the most pocket-friendly in Nigeria and Ghana.
South Africa and China (another ‘New World’ wine producer) are two interesting case studies in global viticulture. While SA Inc., through SA Tourism, is only too eager to sell and showcase its wine portfolio to the rest of the world, China’s fast-expanding connoisseur class prefers ‘Old World’ wine (preferably French) to their homegrown variety. The Chinese have massive vineyards, but I haven’t yet seen any ‘Made in China’ wine in any shop in Cotonou, Lomé or Accra, despite having spied vodka made in India in downtown Lagos! Strange:
the Chinese don’t usually hoard anything salable.
In any case, a stroll into any wine shop in many Ivorian, Ghanaian, Senegalese, Gambian, Cameroonian, Gabonese or Nigerian cities will reveal racks of liquid warfare, symbolic of the silent but ongoing battle of the wine bottles going on between France, Germany, Spain, America, Italy, Chile, Argentina, Australia and, of course, South Africa (for their share of our disposable income).
In these parts, palm wine may have already lost the battle of the bottles. Don’t ask me for figures. The fact is, while varietals like chardonnay, riesling, sauvignon blanc, shiraz, merlot, cabernet sauvignon and pinot noir are measured in hector liters, nobody has been able to guesstimate how many gourds of West African palm wine are consumed.
According to those who should know, a healthy palm tree could have a fruitful lifespan of 10 years or more. But no one knows how many kegs of this indigenous wine are filled daily by traditional palm wine tappers. These guys are busy, for the present, but their numbers are thinning. No forward-thinking person wants his child to learn how to climb a palm tree. Palm-tree tapping is a collarless profession.
Wine retailers in central Lagos tell me that tons of international viticulture finds its way into Africa’s most-populous country in regular bottles, magnums and wooden cases daily, via formal and private channels. But few folk—and they must be connoisseurs—really worry about the geographical origin of their drinks. “Why bother?” someone asked at 1662, a ritzy wine bar in highbrow Ikoyi. “Most of the world’s winemakers don’t have a clue where Abuja is on the map.”
“Quite true, but why should they care?” another patron quipped.
“Ah, my brother,” the chap returned. “It is good to know what you don’t know. That’s the beginning of knowledge, after all. You know, a flute can mean different things. It is a musical instrument. It is also the appropriate glass to use for champagne.”

How Merlot Can You Go?

It is tempting to see the KAZA Transfrontier Conservation Area (TFCA) as a country in the making. But reality falls short of this—at least for now.
The project is so breathtaking in both its scope and ambition that it does inspire dreams of a different tomorrow for a region that is still suffering the miseries inflicted by one of the most brutal wars in recent history. After nearly four decades, the anti-colonial conflict that turned into civil war and at stages involved South Africans, Namibians, Angolans, Cubans and, in surreptitious ways, even the Russians and Americans, came to an end 10 years ago when Angola’s Unita strongman Jonas Savimbi died in a hail of bullets.
<div id="attachment_621" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-621" class="wp-image-621 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_2009-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Dr Victor Siamudaala program manager</div>
Part of the wonder of the project is that the vision for turning the area into a “peace park” started taking shape immediately after the Angolan civil war ended.
“KAZA” stands for the Kavango and Zambezi rivers, with the territory including adjoining sections of Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Its map is practically a state in its own right.
The binding factor is the region’s exceptional natural beauty, including the Victoria Falls, the Okavango Delta and the vast elephant herds traversing its plains and swamps. The area’s relatively sparse communities are so distant from the heartland of their respective states that most of them probably associate more closely with each other than with their countrymen.
Of course, Zimbabwe and Zambia would not dream of ceding those spectacular falls thundering between them. Neither would Botswana consider letting go of the Okavango and the Chobe National Park. These are their countries’ signature natural wonders, and they are the geese laying those golden tourist eggs.
But it is to the credit of the five governments that they have agreed to join these adjacent portions of land in a transboundary scheme that comes to a mammoth 444,000 square kilometer chunk of Africa, with conservation at its heart and tourism as the economic objective for the 2.5 million people living there.
At last year’s Southern African Development Community (SADC) meeting in Luanda, the countries’ leaders issued a declaration when they signed the KAZA TFCA treaty, which came close to conferring a kind of satellite, if not colonial, status on their shared holding.
It said: “The KAZA TFCA shall become an international organization with a legal persona, capable of entering into contracts, and acquiring and disposing of property. Institutions established through the treaty to govern the TFCA, particularly its secretariat, will be empowered to ensure that the objectives of the treaty are realized and corresponding strategic plans and protocols implemented.”
The project includes a range of national parks, game and forest reserves and conservancies. Although these are in varying states of repair, many can be linked across boundaries and through corridors to become mutually supportive within a broader framework that will have nature-based tourism as its main industry. There is even talk of a “KAZA visa” to ease cross-border traffic within the territory.
The scheme has the backing of the German and Netherlands governments, the Swiss Agency of Development and Cooperation, the Peace Parks Foundation and the Worldwide Fund for Nature. Victor Siamudaala, the program manager, is a veterinarian from Zambia. His secretariat is based in Kasane, the charming north-eastern Botswana town where it is not unusual to see elephants wander through, or pedestrians casually step around warthogs scuffling on the sidewalk.
The secretariat is at the center of an intricate bureaucratic web that gives practical effect to the scheme.
As explained by Werner Myburgh, chief executive of the Peace Parks Foundation, each country made a development plan for its particular part of the greater territory with the help of various government departments, the private sector and affected communities. The five plans were then aligned under the umbrella plan for the scheme as a whole. The result is a detailed plan showing how the boundaries run, which areas are earmarked for conservation and which for development, and what the infrastructural requirements are.
Each country has a coordinator who, together with the central secretariat, reports to a committee of senior officials, which is in turn overseen by a steering committee of five ministers from the respective governments.
The wide range of factors that need to be taken into account, including security, customs, veterinary, agricultural and conservation matters, require the involvement of several government departments in each country. Generally, decisions are taken by consensus, which makes the process even more complex.
It explains why the central secretariat, which drives the program’s implementation, prefers to abide by the governments’ jointly approved statements.
But the transfrontier project has caught on since its initiation in 2006. The official launch function was held on March 15, 2012 in the Caprivi town of Katima Mulilo where, under the magnificent trees along the bank of the Zambezi, the South African Defense Force had its forward base more than two decades ago.
The occasion was attended by more than 700 people, including the environmental and tourism ministers of the five governments, SADC’s executive secretary, Dr Tomaz Salamão, and traditional leaders from the five countries.
Myburgh says the sense of ownership of the joint project was tangible. He quotes Botswana’s minister of the environment, wildlife and tourism, Kitso Mokaila: “… (We) have emphasized in the KAZA Treaty… that we will own and lead the planning and development process of the TFCA. We take cognisance of the fact that our land and other natural resources are a valuable heritage of the five partner countries.”
Dr Salamão spoke of the project as a commendable achievement and “a true symbol of regional integration”, which is one of SADC’s goals. He saw it as “a door to further milestones that have the potential to change the lives of communities who live in the KAZA TFCA area for the better”.
The project is not without challenges. Land mines left by the war are scattered around Angola’s Cuando Cubango province that adjoins the Caprivi in the south and southern Zambia to the east. The mines were planted despite the Geneva Convention’s requirement that such areas be mapped, which makes them hard to locate. But, according to Myburgh, clearing has been going on for some time and remains a high priority.
The area includes the Luiana Partial Reserve, which, like rest of the area, was left stripped of game by the fighting armies. But already the vast elephant herds of Botswana have started migrating across Namibia’s Caprivi strip through Zambia, back to the vast woodlands where their ancestors once roamed without fear of soldiers and their explosives.

Tag: Tourism

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Harrods, Heathrow, Home

Harrods, Heathrow, Home

Polar Bears And Rivers Of ice

From Bara Bridge To The Boardroom

Get The Stone Out Of Your Shoe

The Mall King And His New Toys

From A Coup To A Rosy View

Ashes To Eurobond

How Merlot Can You Go?

At The (Trans)frontier Of Conservation And Tourism