Blessing or curse? The political economy of tourism development in Tanzania

This paper analyses how tourism development in Tanzania is shaped in fundamental ways by the political-economic forces governing many post-colonial African states. Politics in Tanzania are characterized by a highly centralized and weakly accountable state, a prevalence of informal rent-seeking interests, institutionalized corruption in government at all levels and the intermingling of a developmentalist discourse built on foreign and private investment with the patronage and accumulative rent-seeking interests of political elites. Natural resources including land, forests and wildlife are central to these political processes, as is tourism as a major source of foreign exchange and investment. The resultant limitations on local communities and ordinary citizens to be able to create tourism enterprises that capture tourism's value as a poverty alleviation instrument are largely a function of the wider political economy, and the dependence of tourism on state-owned and controlled resources such as national parks and wildlife. Illustrations of growing conflicts over land tenure, wildlife revenues and access to tourism benefits in northern Tanzania are given. The development of explicitly rights-based approaches to tourism that emphasize tenure and devolved governance would aid the implementation of poverty alleviation strategies, as would research into the political economy of tourism and its governance.