Zimbabwe Tourism Minister Walter Mzembi took complete advantage of the present U.N. World Tourism Organization summit his country is co-hosting with Zambia this week to announce the government’s audacious plan, to build a $300 million theme park by Victoria Falls. This would make the world’s largest sheet of falling water and the nation’s biggest tourist attraction a haven for white-knuckle enthusiasts.
“We have reserved 1,200 hectares (3,000 acres) of land near the Victoria Falls International Airport to construct hotels and convention centers,” Mzembi told Zimbabwe’s official government news agency New Ziana from the sidelines of the summit, which runs through Aug. 29. He likened the theme park to a “Disneyland in Africa” which would house shopping malls, exhibition spaces and entertainment facilities including casinos. Yet, Mzembi’s ambitious plans don’t yield there.
“We want to create a free zone with a banking center where even people living outside Zimbabwe can open bank accounts there,” he added. Though the plans also spread to include modernising the Victoria Falls International Airport. This expansion will allow the government to provide better access for wide-body aircraft using a $202 million loan from the Export-Import Bank of China. By 2015, the government hopes too have a longer runway and larger aircraft in place, which will hopefully increase and double annual passenger capacity from 500,000 to 1.2 million.
Mzembi said most current visitors use the airport for whistle-stop tours, simply flying in and out of Victoria Falls, using it as a transit zone instead of an outright destination. The few magnetisms beyond the natural wonder include an open-top bus tour and a bungee jumping operation that made headlines for the wrong reason last year after the cord snapped on an Australian tourist, who just managed to survive. The tourism minister said he hoped that the proposed $300 million theme park would entice people to stay longer and spend more money in Zimbabwe.
Mzembi released a statement last month ahead of the Unwto summit saying that the tourism sector grew 17 percent in the first quarter of 2013, compared with 2012 figures, and would contribute 15 percent to the GDP and employ one in every 12 Zimbabweans by 2015. “I project that the country’s tourism sector will rake in $5 billion by 2015, if the correct peace and stability prevails,” he noted. In 2012, Zimbabwe earned $300 million in tourism revenue, according to official figures.
Zimbabwe’s economy is largely sustained by the work of those within the mining and agriculture sectors, but the government has made a big push in recent years to increase its attractiveness as a tourist destination. Yet, systemic issues and a reputation for violence and political instability threaten to undermine any sustainable growth.
The Unwto summit at Victoria Falls this week, which is meant to highlight Zimbabwe as a global destination, comes on the heels of the bitterly disputed July 31 elections, which critics believe were rigged in Robert Mugabe’s favor.
The nongovernmental human rights group U.N. Watch expressed “grave disappointment” at the U.N. decision to make Zimbabwe a co-host of the global tourism summit, saying it was a “disgraceful show of support — and a terribly timed award of false legitimacy — for a brutal, corrupt and authoritarian regime.”
“Zimbabwe is a country that often struggles to do the basic things it needs to do and this cannot be a sensible suggestion,” said Chris McIntyre, managing director of specialist tour operator Expert Africa. He went on to proclaim that tourists prefer authenticity to a canned theme park experience.
However, during opening dinner celebrations, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe extolled his nation as “a safe and secure destination for world tourists,” while at the same time bemoaning Western nations “demonic tendencies” towards him and his oft-controversial leadership.
