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.

Sustainable Tourism Policy and Planning in Africa offers an accessible and understandable overview of the challenges of integrating sustainability into tourism policy and planning in Sub-Saharan Africa and provides some interesting recommendations on how these could be overcome. Tourism is currently growing faster in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and in many other developing regions compared to the rest of the world. Using case examples from different segments of the tourism sector in different country contexts, this volume therefore reassesses context specific tourism policies and planning mechanisms in SSA over the years. It considers how the increasing focus on sustainability is reflected in different areas of the tourism sector including food security, the human capacity management, service delivery, local communities and heritage management, climate change and the influence of colonial legacies on tourism policy planning. For many SSA countries, it has only been in the last two decades that the development of sustainable and achievable context specific policies and planning mechanisms has become the norm. The chapters provide examples of how different dimensions of sustainability are integrated into tourism policy and practice, and examine the extent to which these are shaping the present, and their implications for the future sustainability of the tourism sector. Sustainable Tourism Policy and Planning in Africa will be of great value to academics, private and third sector employees to better understand tourism in Sub-Saharan Africa. Eight of the chapters were originally published as a special issue of Tourism Planning and Development. These are now complimented with a new introductory chapter and a concluding chapter that sets out a future research agenda for sustainable tourism policy and planning.

Since its first mention in the academic literature, ecotourism has been endorsed by NGOs and governments as the most environmentally sound and locally beneficial method of tourist development. Over the last thirty years sub-Saharan Africa has adopted ecotourism as the primary focus for tourism development; research into this has demonstrated mixed results. In this publication, we seek to explore the actual outcomes for African countries that have developed their tourism policy around the principals and values of ecotourism. The sheer scope and magnitude of the task means that a complete evaluation of ecotourism in Africa is impossible. Instead, included here are spot assessments of various aspects of ecotourism related to conservation, policy development, environment, governance, community and indigenous peoples in southern Africa. The studies cover a wide array of countries, including Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Though this is only the beginning of a needed long term evaluation of the positives and negatives of ecotourism, it provides a starting point from which to move forward. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ecotourism.

In this multidisciplinary and multi-jurisdictional account of sustainability in urban tourist destinations, the Handbook on Sustainable Urban Tourism draws together the latest academic research and provides key practical insights on this developing area of study. It not only considers the importance of cities as ideal tourist destinations due to their complex characteristics and the variety of attractions they offer, but also the challenges they are confronted with, most notably sustainability.

Over the past 20 years, the perception of tourism as an effective contributor to socio-economic development in the developing world has propagated, with many viewing tourism as a provider for poverty alleviation and towards other UN Millennium Development Goals. Over the same period, readers have become familiar with the paradoxes, complexities and inequalities of tourism in relation to development, wealth creation, growth, redistribution, governance and ‘hosts-guests’ relationships. This volume further extends this critical debate with a much-needed cohesive publication on Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA). In an era of fluctuating tourist arrivals at global level, the growth of tourism in SSA requires deeper consideration in terms of its inconsistent and questionable implications at local level. Taking as a central theme the debate on whether tourism should be used in development efforts, this book examines the way in which tourism has controversially become the way forward to development in several SSA locations and assesses bottlenecks to sustainable development as well as dilemmas and challenges faced by those SSA destinations seeking to achieve development through tourism. It offers an explicit set of chapters adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, drawing upon tourism studies, human geography, sociology, anthropology, political economy, development and environmental studies, and integrates case studies authored by local African practitioners and academics to produce a book that gave voice to local experts on local realities. Combining an overview of key theories, concepts, contemporary issues and debates as well as practical insights from a wide range of regions in SSA, this book will be a valuable resource for those investigating the role of tourism in development.

This book examines and addresses the particular character of urban tourism occurring in the global South. It presents research essays on tourism in urban areas of South Africa, a country which is associated with big 5 nature tourism but where urban areas are also major tourism destinations. The book contextualizes urban tourism in South Africa as part of ‘the other half of urban tourism’, an overlooked but energetic scholarship which is emerging on urban places in the global South. The volume moves to present a collection of original material variously on national perspectives on urban tourism following by a cluster of city level perspectives. The last three contributions turn to the role of tourism in small towns, the bottom rung in the urban settlement system. Issues of concern include gastronomic tourism, VFR travel, airportscapes, climate change, AirBnb and creative tourism. Finally, as COVID-19 is potentially a defining historical moment for urban tourism, the volume incorporates historical research perspectives in order to address the overwhelming ‘present-mindedness’ of mainstream urban tourism writings. The book highlights the challenges and opportunities for tourism development in the environment of the urban global South and is relevant to scholars of both tourism and urban studies as well as researchers in development studies.