DURBAN - The newly launched African Nature-Based Tourism Platform is an innovative collaboration to channel vital Covid-19 relief and recovery funding to communities and small and medium enterprises involved in nature-based tourism in Africa.
The platform is in its seventh month of a three-year project and will benefit beneficiaries in eastern and southern Africa.
With funding from the Global Environment Facility, the Platform seeks to connect funders to communities and small and medium enterprises involved in nature-based tourism in 11 African countries.
Project manager Dr Nikhil Advani, said the Covid-19 crisis has crippled economies and industries all over the world, and nature-based tourism has been one of the leading economic casualties.
“For many African countries, this means a significant loss of funding for their conservation operations, local community livelihoods, and tourism enterprises.”
Advani said the goal is to mobilise at least $15 million (R238m) to support communities and SMEs to build greater resilience into the nature-based tourism business model into the future.
“The types of financial support we are looking to make available to beneficiaries include grants, loans, equity, and quasi-equity, among others. The sources for this financial support include governments, individual donors, institutional donors, banks, and investors, among others,” he said.
Since its launch in April 2021, the platform has conducted over 525 surveys to measure the impact of Covid-19 among communities and SMEs across the project’s focal countries. Data suggests a reduction of 58% of the staff complement across the enterprises surveyed to date.
Other benefits include, enhanced knowledge sharing between relevant stakeholders facilitates the development of funding proposals from communities and SMEs and serves as a hub for everyone involved in the sector to share and access information
The platform is now turning attention to funding resources available for Covid-19 relief and recovery, as well as building the longer-term resilience of the nature-based tourism sector in the region.
“The Platform welcomes the opportunity to further explore funding resources that will allow nature-based tourism enterprises to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic in a sustainable way, and build back better to increase resilience to future shocks and stressors,” it said.
THE MERCURY