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.

This book examines the nexus between conservation, land conflicts, and sustainable tourism approaches in Southern Africa, with a focus on equity, access, restitution, and redistribution.

While Southern Africa is home to important biodiversity, pristine woodlands, and grasslands, and is a habitat for important wildlife species, it is also a land of contestations over its natural resources with a complex historical legacy and a wide variety of competing and conflicting issues surrounding race, cultural and traditional practices, and neoliberalism. Drawing on insights from conservation, environmental, and tourism experts, this volume presents the nexus between land conflicts and conservation in the region. The chapters reveal the hegemony of humans on land and associated resources including wildlife and minerals. By using social science approaches, the book unites environmental, scientific, social, and political issues, as it is imperative we understand the holistic nature of land conflicts in nature-based tourism. Discussing the management theories and approaches to community-based tourism in communities where there are or were land conflicts is critical to understanding the current state and future of tourism in African rural spaces. This volume determines the extent to which land reform impacts community-based tourism in Africa to develop resilient destination strategies and shares solutions to existing land conflicts to promote conservation and nature-based tourism.

The book will be of great interest to students, academics, development experts, and policymakers in the field of conservation, tourism geography, sociology, development studies, land use, and environmental management and African studies.

Table of Contents

1. Land Conflicts in Southern Africa: the sustainability of Tourism and Conservation

Regis Musavengane & Llewellyn Leonard

Part 1: Land governance and sustainable tourism management

2. An alternative governance approach towards addressing the intersection between mining developments and impacts on tourism and conservation sites in Southern Africa

Llewellyn Leonard

3. The Deepening Challenge of Governance of Wildlife and Land Issues in the Context of Rising Citizen Participation in South Africa

Tariro Kamuti

4. Leadership and Governance Intricacies in Communally-owned Protected Areas: The Case of Somkhanda Game Reserve, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa

Oscar Mthimkhulu & Adrian Nel

Part 2: Managing natural disasters and land reform tourism crises

5. Complex effects of natural disasters on protected areas: the case of Cyclone Idai in Mozambique

Pekka Virtanen, Luis Cristóvão, & José Mourinho

6. The challenges and prospects of community-based tourism post Zimbabwe's land reform programme in the Midlands Province.

Zibanai Zhou & Dzingai Kennedy Nyahunzvi

7. A review of post-restitution land rights agreement conflicts and their resolution at &Beyond Phinda Private Game Reserve in KZN, South Africa

Jones Mudimu Muzirambi, Simon Naylor, & Kevin Mearns

8. Environmental Operational Research for Sustainable Tourism and Conflict Management in Community-based Natural Resources Management

Regis Musavengane

Part 3: Managing land use, access, and benefit-sharing conflicts

9. The state, community-based tourism and wildlife user rights in tourism concessions in Botswana

Joseph Mbaiwa & Emmanuel Mogende

10. COVID-19, conservation, and tourism in Namibia’s Conservancies: socioeconomic and land-use impacts

Eduard Gargallo & Jona Heita

11. Conflicts between Conservation and community livelihoods: lessons from KwaNibela and iSimangaliso Wetland Park, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Zwelakhe Thulasizwe Mascot Maseko & Inocent Moyo

12. The partially transformed frontier: Aspirations, limitations, and tensions of transfrontier conservation in the Maloti-Drakensberg

Oscar Mthimkhulu & Adrian Nel

Part 4: Conclusion

13. The future of community-based tourism amid socio-economic and political conflicts in Southern Africa

Llewellyn Leonard & Regis Musavengane

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.