Description:
This study explores the contribution of community empowerment
to the sustainability of ecotourism in Tanzania
using education programmes, access to information and language.
Through the survey approach data was collected from
Tanzania’s ecotourism stakeholders (N=250) in the eight
selected regions of Dar es Salaam, Pwani, Morogoro, Tanga
and Zanzibar (for the eastern tourism circuit) and Arusha,
Kilimanjaro and Manyara (for the northern circuit) and thereafter
a qualitative analysis was employed complemented
by estimation of the multinomial logistic regression model.
The findings show that tourism stakeholders lack sufficient
knowledge on ecotourism conservation and preservation.
Likewise community members have poor access to information
due to insufficient ecotourism publications, tourist information
centres, a reliable mechanism for communicating
with stakeholders and the use of foreign languages in most
of the publications. It is therefore the study’s recommendation
that community members be empowered through
being provided with adequate education programmes and
access to relevant information and the use of a language that
is understood by them in order to broaden their level of understanding,
enhance their management skills and contribute
significantly to ecotourism-related activities.