Sustainable Urban Tourism in Sub-Saharan Africa

Risk and Resilience

Llewellyn Leonard, Regis Musavengane, Pius Siakwah, Llewellyn Leonard, Regis Musavengane, Pius Siakwah

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000317831
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Development
• Index: Business

This book investigates urban tourism development in Sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting the challenges and risks involved, but also showcasing the potential benefits.

Whilst much is written on Africa's rural environments, little has been written about the tourism potential of the vast natural, cultural and historical resources in the continent's urban areas. Yet these opportunities also come with considerable environmental, social and political challenges. This book interrogates the interactions between urban risks, tourism and sustainable development in Sub-Saharan African urban spaces. It addresses the underlying issues of governance, power, ownership, collaboration, justice, community empowerment and policies that influence tourism decision-making at local, national and regional levels. Interrogating the intricate relationships between tourism stakeholders, this book ultimately reflects on how urban risk can be mitigated, and how sustainable urban tourism can be harnessed for development.

The important insights in this book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners across Tourism, Geography, Urban Development, and African Studies.

1 Urban risk and tourism in Africa

An overview

Llewellyn Leonard, Regis Musavengane and Pius Siakwah

1Introduction

African cities, and particularly urban spaces in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), are pivots of socioeconomic development with ever-increasing potential for tourism development, despite the plethora of challenges these urban spaces experience. Urbanisation is a multifaceted concept (Musavengane et al., 2020); it is not only about population growth in towns and cities, but also the extent to which this growth is accompanied by structural shifts in the economic, employment, social, environmental and political spheres (UN-Habitat, 2016; Awumbila, 2014). Urban areas are settlements with large and high population densities and built infrastructures (Satterthwaite, 2017). They have been experiencing significant population and structural changes. According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) (2015), the global population in urban areas is expected to double, with an estimated 1 in 3 persons residing in cities and over 3 billion persons living in slums by 2050. In 2014, 880 million urban residents were estimated to live in slums, an increase of 11% since 2000 (UNDP, 2015). Regionally, SSA urban areas currently contain approximately 472 million people, with the global share of African urban residents projected to grow from 11% in 2010 to 20% by 2050 (Saghir & Santoro, 2018). Similarly, in SSA, nearly 60% of people live in slums (UN-Habitat, 2016). Although urbanisation levels in many large mainland countries have reduced since the 1970s due to Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) impacting urban economies and livelihoods, some countries continued to urbanise fairly rapidly due to the global commodity boom around 2003–2014 (Potts, 2013, 2017). A sharp rise in urban population over the next 30 years is expected in Asia and Africa (Neiderud, 2015).

With this urban transition in mind, the poor and the vulnerable travelling to these urban areas generally settle in lower-income and hazardous areas, as healthy environments are beyond their reach economically and socially. As Agyeman et al. (2003) note, customarily low-income areas become targets for social and environmental injustices. As the poor move into those spaces with little or no provision of social services, it also exposes and increases their vulnerability. Poverty is becoming increasingly urbanised, and the urban poor are susceptible to various urban risks, such as societal and health risks (UN Habitat, 2016). Unplanned urban growth can contribute to urban social, political and environmental risks (Asian Development Bank, 2013), and there is a need for effective planning to mitigate (and alleviate) risks that affect tourism development (Fraser et al., 2017), as the sector is not immune to urbanisation challenges.

2Contextualising urbanisation, urban risk and tourism

Despite the obvious interlocks between urban risks and tourism development, academic research in this arena has been limited (Siakwah et al., 2020), with urban tourism in many southern African cities seeming largely invisible to the scholarly gaze (Visser, 2019). An understanding of current and future trends in sustainable tourism is thus critical, and it has to be complemented with an appraisal of urban risks (Musavengane et al., 2020). Some of the urban risks that pose challenges to urban tourism development (and as underst...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Urban risk and tourism in Africa: An overview
• Theme 1: Urban tourism and environmental pollution risks
• Theme 2: Peace tourism, battlefields and war risks
• Theme 3: Tourism, climate change and flood risks
• Theme 4: Inclusive urban tourism and enclaves
• Index