SDIs, tourism‐led growth and the empowerment of local communities in South Africa

Abstract

Economic justice is the key aim of the tourism and/or agricultural development initiatives ‐ including the Wild Coast, Lubombo, Maputo, Coast2Coast and Okavango Upper Zambezi International Tourism SDIs. This article looks in more detail at the models and principles being adopted to achieve this in the tourism sectors of the SDIs, with particular reference to the Lubombo and Wild Coast initiatives. The article thus moves away from the general lessons learnt from international experiences to comprehensive guidelines for implementation and, towards the end, presents detailed checklists that can be used by practitioners of what the SDI technical team calls ‘empotourism’.

Notes

Respectively, Director of Mafisa (a company that does research and planning for community tourism) and contributing editor to Out There magazine; Consultant, DB Consulting, also formerly Principal Specialist, DBSA and part of the SDI Technical Team; Principal Specialist (Programming), DBSA and part of the SDI Technical Team. This article was produced by Eddie Koch and based on a series of papers by Geoff de Beer, Sean Elliffe and others. These references are provided at the end of this article and contain full details of literature cited in it