Social-economic impacts of Enclave tourism and on developing countries: Lessons from Africa, Livingstone, Zambia

Abstract

This paper draws on the dependency paradigm to illustrate the social-economic impacts of enclave tourism on developing countries using the town of Livingstone in Zambia, Africa as a case study. Utilising both primary and secondary data sources, the study indicates that international tourists, foreign investors dominate the tourism industry in Livingstone, Zambia. The foreign domination and ownership of tourism accommodation and adventure activities has led to the repatriation of tourism revenue, taking up of management positions by expatriates at the expense of locals, weaker government policies leading to lower wages and lack of protection for locally engaged employees and generally failure by tourism to significantly contribute to poverty alleviation in Livingstone. As a result, tourism and despite being perceived as a strong sector that would contribute to poverty alleviation, tourism in Livingstone has had minimal social-economic impact on the overall development of Livingstone town due its weaker linkages with the domestic economy. Because of this dominance by foreign ownership that have created cartels in the business, tourism in Livingstone can be said to be unsustainable from a socio-economic perspective. In order to address problems of enclave tourism development and promote more inclusive and beneficial tourism development in Livingstone, Zambia and other developing countries, there is need to adopt policies and strategies that will ensure substantial amounts of tourism revenue returned any tourists destination such as Livingstone. These strategies should also ensure that tourism development in developing countries has strong linkages with the rest of the economic activities in the country.