Nicaraguan singer Hernaldo Zuniga brought his entire family to trek through the lush forests and mist-shrouded volcanoes of northwestern Rwanda in search of mountain gorillas.
He described their encounter with the critically endangered primates as “an almost spiritual” experience, and said it was the only reason they made Rwanda a stop on a trip taking in a safari in Kenya, and a tour of South Africa.
But Rwanda is no longer content with being a whirlwind stop on a tourist’s itinerary, and is working hard to broaden its appeal beyond its world-famous mountain gorillas while narrowing its niche market to the wealthiest of visitors.
Photo: AFP
Zuniga counts himself lucky that his family of five scored their permits to see the gorillas before Rwanda’s eyebrow-raising move to double the cost to $1,500 (1,300 euros) per person in May.
“I think that is going to be a drawback for many people. It is just going to be an elite group of people who can pay that,” said Zuniga, a well-known star in Latin America.
For Rwanda however, the price hike is part of a careful strategy to boost conservation efforts while positioning itself as a luxury tourist destination.
“The idea behind (the increase) is that it is an exclusive experience which also needs to be limited in numbers. Our tourism is very much based on natural resources and we are very serious about conservation,” said Clare Akamanzi, the chief executive of the Rwanda Development Board.
It is a high-value, low-impact strategy that has worked well for countries such as Botswana and Bhutan.
SAFE AND CLEAN
The remote, mountainous border area straddling Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda is the only place in the world where one can see the gorillas, whose numbers have slowly increased to nearly 900 due to conservation efforts.
Permits in the DRC ($400) and Uganda ($600) are far cheaper, but Rwandan officials are not concerned that they will lose tourists to their neighbours, arguing the country offers an experience that is rare in the region.
Ever since the devastating 1994 genocide in which 800,000 mainly Tutsis were killed, the country has been praised for a swift economic turnaround.
“When you come to Rwanda it is a clean, organized, safe country with zero tolerance for corruption. We have concentrated on creating a good experience,” said Akamanzi, also highlighting a quick visa process.
The challenge is getting tourists to make Rwanda their main destination, and spend more than the usual four days it takes to visit the gorillas and maybe the genocide museum before heading elsewhere.
“We want to keep it high-end as an anchor for tourism but provide other offerings,” said Akamanzi. She said tourism is already the country’s top foreign exchange earner, but believes they “have only scratched the surface”.
So the country, known as the Land of a Thousand Hills is looking into sports tourism such as cycling, cultural tourism and becoming a Big Five safari destination in its own right.
In the past two years Rwanda has re-introduced both lions and rhino to its Akagera National Park — which had gone extinct due to poor conservation — and visitor numbers to the reserve have doubled, said Akamanzi.
THERE WILL BE AN IMPACT
However gorillas remain the main lure, and industry players are concerned about the impact the price increase could have on the whole tourism chain.
“We risk losing substantial revenue for the industry and government as a whole. Currently a number of gorilla permits are already not sold in the low season,” the Rwanda Tours and Travel Association (RTTA) said in a statement after the decision was announced.
Mid-range hotels around the Volcanoes National Park say it is too soon to tell what the fallout will be, but several managers expressed concerns they would lose their main clientele.
“Either way there will be an impact,” said Fulgence Nkwenprana, who runs the La Palme hotel.
Aloys Kamanzi, a guide with Individual Tours, acknowledged there has been an initial slowdown in reservations, but is convinced people will keep coming, adding his clients are mostly “retired tourists who have saved their whole lives”, some of whom come three or four times.
The singer Zuniga said coming to Rwanda was a hard decision, as he had not heard much about what the country was like today from Mexico, where he lives with his family.
“Rwanda has a lot of sensitive echoes in my generation, the genocide ... we had to cross over all these personal obstacles to make the decision to come here,” he said.
“They have to do better in promoting their tourism. Once you are here it is amazing, the people are unique, the country is beautiful. I would like to stay longer.”
Oct. 27 to Nov. 2 Over a breakfast of soymilk and fried dough costing less than NT$400, seven officials and engineers agreed on a NT$400 million plan — unaware that it would mark the beginning of Taiwan’s semiconductor empire. It was a cold February morning in 1974. Gathered at the unassuming shop were Economics minister Sun Yun-hsuan (孫運璿), director-general of Transportation and Communications Kao Yu-shu (高玉樹), Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) president Wang Chao-chen (王兆振), Telecommunications Laboratories director Kang Pao-huang (康寶煌), Executive Yuan secretary-general Fei Hua (費驊), director-general of Telecommunications Fang Hsien-chi (方賢齊) and Radio Corporation of America (RCA) Laboratories director Pan
President William Lai (賴清德) has championed Taiwan as an “AI Island” — an artificial intelligence (AI) hub powering the global tech economy. But without major shifts in talent, funding and strategic direction, this vision risks becoming a static fortress: indispensable, yet immobile and vulnerable. It’s time to reframe Taiwan’s ambition. Time to move from a resource-rich AI island to an AI Armada. Why change metaphors? Because choosing the right metaphor shapes both understanding and strategy. The “AI Island” frames our national ambition as a static fortress that, while valuable, is still vulnerable and reactive. Shifting our metaphor to an “AI Armada”
When Taiwan was battered by storms this summer, the only crumb of comfort I could take was knowing that some advice I’d drafted several weeks earlier had been correct. Regarding the Southern Cross-Island Highway (南橫公路), a spectacular high-elevation route connecting Taiwan’s southwest with the country’s southeast, I’d written: “The precarious existence of this road cannot be overstated; those hoping to drive or ride all the way across should have a backup plan.” As this article was going to press, the middle section of the highway, between Meishankou (梅山口) in Kaohsiung and Siangyang (向陽) in Taitung County, was still closed to outsiders
The older you get, and the more obsessed with your health, the more it feels as if life comes down to numbers: how many more years you can expect; your lean body mass; your percentage of visceral fat; how dense your bones are; how many kilos you can squat; how long you can deadhang; how often you still do it; your levels of LDL and HDL cholesterol; your resting heart rate; your overnight blood oxygen level; how quickly you can run; how many steps you do in a day; how many hours you sleep; how fast you are shrinking; how
RSS