Despite rapid economic liberalization, many African countries have been unable to export themselves out of poverty via the agricultural sector. Governments are looking increasingly to tourism exports as a source of growth. This study assesses how nature tourism affects poverty and inequality in Namibia and Mozambique at the regional, community, and household levels, while also accounting for environmental, economic, and cultural diversity between and within countries. Namibia is considered a pioneer of using community-based nature tourism as a development strategy, while Mozambique has more recently embarked on the promotion of nature tourism and community conservancy programs. The study design draws on both quantitative and qualitative research methods. The quantitative research includes the development and application of spatial econometric and hierarchical linear models, which will model household well-being and regional inequality as a function of distance to tourism enterprises and other factors. Qualitative cases studies of communities that are located near parks, hunting concessions, and other popular areas for nature tourism will complement the study's modelling component.
The proposed study makes four key contributions to our broader theoretical understanding of rural economies in southern Africa. The study (1) investigates how well trade theory explains the effects of tourism exports on poverty and inequality in rural regions; (2) assesses the effects of nature tourism on poverty and inequality, while accounting for diversity within southern Africa; (3) explicitly investigates how experiences of rural development strategies are influenced by community organization and empowerment; and (4) uses an iterative, mixed methodology to explore the impacts of export-led rural development strategies at multiple geographic scales. The project will thus considerably enhance our understanding of the dynamics driving rural development in countries such as Namibia and Mozambique.
This comparative study of Namibia and Mozambique will identify areas where Namibian-style community-based nature tourism enterprises might be most beneficial in Mozambique. Project findings could help inform policy-makers in promoting the goals outlined in Namibia's Vision 2030 and Mozambique's 2006-2009 Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, government documents which prioritize the alleviation of poverty and inequality. All research products – including anonymized datasets, maps, and scholarly articles –will be distributed to government agencies, national libraries, universities, and relevant non-governmental organizations.
The study involves close collaboration between the University of Florida (UF), the University of Namibia (UNAM) and the Pedagogical University of Mozambique (UP). Pursuing this project will allow researchers from all three universitites to work together on peer-reviewed papers and presentations. Students from both UNAM and UP will assist with the project's case study component. These students will gain valuable exposure to social science research, and those from UP – a teachers' college – will be able to incorporate this research into curricula that promote knowledge of environmental conservation and community-based models of rural development. Research results will be made available to UNAM and UP for use in their training modules and classroom instruction. The results of this study will also be integrated into courses on African economic development at the University of Florida.