Lilly Ajarova, CEO of the Uganda Tourism Board (UTB), has shared her insights from the first UN Tourism Regional Tourism Forum on Gastronomy in Zimbabwe, held from July 26-28, in an interview with VoyagesAfriq.
The forum provided critical insights that will shape Uganda’s forthcoming 10-year tourism policy.
“One of the major things is that right now as a country – Uganda, we are developing our 10-year tourism policy. We have had one which is now expired and as we are developing a new policy, one of the things that have come up that we need to include in the policy is gastronomy. But it wasn’t taking a center stage or a big space in how we were describing it,” said Ajarova.
The forum, according to Ajarova, was incredibly timely. “Coming for this conference was very timely because there was a lot of knowledge that was shared, information that is definitely going to feed into the new policy as far as gastronomy is concerned,” she added.
Uganda’s culinary scene is experiencing a renaissance, with a significant increase in interest from entrepreneurs and the private sector. “We have a lot of interests now from the entrepreneurs, the private sector who are developing different experiences around gastronomy. We have a lot of Ugandan restaurants that are serving the typical Ugandan delicacy in the city centre across the country; which was not the case before.
“If you wanted to taste a delicacy of an area in Southwestern Uganda, you needed to have travelled there but now you can actually get it in Kampala in the capital city,” Ajarova explained.
The country is also making strides in agrotourism, as outlined in the newly developed guidelines. “One of the policies that we have developed in the guidelines is for agrotourism. We have shared this widely and we are seeing a lot of developments along agrotourism, where travellers can actually go to different farms with people who have worked on their farms to host international travellers. It is from the farm to the plate, from the farm to the cup, with coffee, tea where the traveller participates in the process of either picking tea or coffee,” she stated.
Ajarova also highlighted the growing trend of cultural villages, where visitors can immerse themselves in traditional Ugandan lifestyles. “These are growing concepts with the farms on agrotourism. But there is also a growing trend of developing cultural villages where the local Ugandan women – the typical old ladies are there in these villages and they cook and get you to learn and be part of the cooking, visit the farm, do the fishing, have the catch of the bird to be cooked for you in a very traditional way.
“So, I think what is so critical is that these developments are not captured in any policy framework and now that the tourism policy is under development we will be capturing it,” she emphasised.
On the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) front, Ajarova shared that Uganda has a comprehensive 5-year MICE strategy, with significant infrastructure developments underway. “For instance, there is the Speke Resort Convention Centre, which is a new infrastructure and the development at the Source of the Nile which is supposed to be one of the key experiences for the MICE traveller,” she noted.
To support the growing capacity needs, new hotels are being constructed, including global brands such as Hilton and Marriott.
“But most importantly is the human resource. So, a lot of training is ongoing both for the convention centre staff and also the private sector like the professional conference organisers. We are getting international experts who are coming to train them, so we are very exciting times,” Ajarova mentioned.
Later this year, the Uganda Tourism Board will unveil its Marketing Strategy in August, aiming to better position Uganda as a premier tourism destination.
This Article was first published in the October 2024 Issue of VoyagesAfriq Travel Magazine
