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INTEGRATED TOURISM DEVELOPMENT PROJECT, ZANZIBAR
Tourism in
Zanzibar has grown at an estimated 16% per annum over the last 10 years.
However, much of the food consumed by the tourists - including about 80%
of fresh vegetables, 20% of fresh fruits and 40% of herbs and spices -
is imported from mainland Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa or even further
afield in Europe. The Zanzibar Tourism Commission is anxious to reverse
this trend, both to reduce costs to the tourist hotels and restaurants,
to bring economic benefits to local farmers, and hence to improve relations
between the tourists and the surrounding communities.
Hotel and
restaurant managers traditionally complain that there are too many problems
in sourcing large quantities of food locally: see Box 1 for a list of
commonly voiced constraints. However, some smaller hotels and restaurants,
particularly locally owned guesthouses, do source a high proportion of
their fresh food requirements locally. They are able to do this partly
because the quantities they require are relatively small, partly because
they have close links with local communities, partly because they take
positive action to support and promote local production and sourcing.
Box 1:
Constraints to Local Food Sourcing
-
Unreliable supply: farmers may bring several baskets of
vegetables one day and then not be seen again for weeks;
-
Unpredictable quality: rotting tomatoes or mangoes at the
bottom of the basket, milk or yoghurt contaminated, chickens fed
unpermitted antibiotics;
-
Seasonal production: locally grown vegetables are not available
in the dry season except in rare cases where irrigation facilities
are available;
-
Insufficient quantities: some hotels have to prepare up
to 1000 meals a day, requiring larger quantities of fruit, vegetables,
meat, eggs etc than local producers can supply;
-
Unsuitable varieties: ingredients for some dishes, eg the
special tomato varieties and herbs needed for Italian pizza, are
not widely grown locally;
-
Unpredictable demand: uncertain occupancy rates mean that
hotels cannot place guaranteed orders with local suppliers;
-
Unsuitable growing conditions: soils and climate close
to many hotels, eg Unguja east coast, are not suitable for growing
many of the foods required;
-
Excessive prices: locally grown foodstuffs may be more
expensive than bulk purchased equivalents imported from mainland
Tanzania, Kenya or even further afield.
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The actions
needed to promote local food sourcing include:
- supply of production inputs (seeds, agrochemicals, irrigation facilities):
some hotels provide such inputs to local farmers and farmer groups
on credit, securing the loans through a guarantee that the farmers
will sell the products to the hotel;
- technical back-up to enable farmers to produce the quantities and
quality of food that the hotels require: Ministry of Agriculture in
association with the hotels provide this advice;
- production finance: where institutional
sources of credit
are not available, the hotel may itself have to set up a revolving
loan fund and some have successfully done this;
- producer associations: smallholders need to form
producer groups to facilitate their dealings with the buyers
of their produce as well as access to inputs and services. Several
groups have done this with help from a local NGO, which plays the
part of facilitating imtermediary;
- market information: farmers need up-to-date information on markets
and prices in order to plan their production and negotiate on price.
This is normally a role for the Ministry of Agriculture, Board of
Trade or Chamber of Commerce;
- import restrictions: temporary restrictions on import of foods
which can be produced locally would help local farmers to establish
themselves in the face of competition, but such actions must be taken
with care to avoid the risk of creating inefficient monopolies.
[Source:
Integrated Tourism Development Project, Ministry of Trade, Industry, Marketing
and Tourism, Zanzibar, 2002]
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