Country: South Africa

Organization: Open Africa

Year the initiative began: 2006

Project Website: Website

Positioning in the Mosaic of solutions:

• Main barrier addressed: Corporate monolithic approach to tourism
• Main insight addressed: Establish community incentives

What is the goal of your innovation?
To mainstream rural and marginalised communities into tourism and to do this in a manner that mainstreams conservation into tourism, thus to address the problems facing these communities of a lack of business opportunities combined with a lack of incentives for them to conserve their natureand cultural assets.

How does your approach support or embody geotourism?
Open Africa’s activities are aimed at optimizing the synergies between tourism, job creation and conservation, based on the twin principles of sustainability and community participation. While job creation is a major problem in Africa, the potential for nature-based tourism here is extraordinary and has the benefit of utilizing the continent’s indigenous strengths. These are its nature resources as custodian of most of the world’s animal and plant species, the charisma of its people, and their culture and heritage as the birthplace of humankind. The Open Africa model embodies all the Geotourism principles. It is synergistic in providing a barrier free plug-in point to everyone who can add value to its benefits; encourages the preservation of a sense of place by reaffirming pride in assets that are otherwise regarded as non-productive; is community-based and promotes collaboration among the players by rallying them around a common vision; builds capacity through disseminating success and best practice stories; inspires local economic development; unveils unique cultural, spiritual and nature-interactive experiences for travelers, and provides an incentive for conservation by taking cognizance of the concept of accountability through the assessment of social, environmental and economic impacts. In the latter connection, in circumstances where poverty is ravaging both people and the environment, it establishes a link between tourism and conservation in a symbiotic relationship where poverty reduction is promoted through conservation and vice versa.

Describe your approach in detial. How is it innovative?
Open Africa believes the future is mirrored in the way the Worldwide Web works, with networking as the enabler to achieving greater reach and more impact through collectivism. With this in mind the organization has developed a systematized and replicable model through which to develop, market, and sustain responsible tourism in rural and marginalized areas by creating tourism routes – in effect clusters of operators and attractions. Open Africa rallies all the players in an area around a common vision; collects, collates and presents their details and those of the attractions of the area on a GIS integrated website; thereby creating comprehensive authentic area-specific information for travellers. Thus the system connects tourism products together, connects these products to markets, and connects all the players with knowledge, ideas, and opportunities by networking best practice examples throughout the system. This initiative is more of a movement than a project, in which those who subscribe to it, from donors thru affiliates, tourism and conservation agencies, governments, other NGO’s and route participants are collaborative agents in constructing a societal ecosystem in which they benefit from each others strengths, with Open Africa as the catalyst.

What types of partnerships or professional developement would be most beneficial in spearding your innovation?
Since Open Africa does not charge for its interventions so as to avoid barriers to entry for those who are marginalized, fund raising is our major challenge. Nevertheless we prefer having engaged supporters to straight philanthropy and seek cross-sector partnerships that work for both parties through collaboration related to common goals. In our case these goals are poverty alleviation, conservation, and the promotion of responsible tourism. In the latter case our market is more oriented toward travelers than tourists, travelers being those who are active, inquisitive, in search of experiences and keen to learn and interact with others.

In one sentence describe what kind of impact, change, or reform your approach is intended to achieve.
To create jobs in symbiosis with conservation.

Describe the degree of success of your approach to date. Clearly define how you measure quantitative and qualitative impact in terms of how your approach contributes to the sustainability or enhancement of local culture, environment, heritage, or aesthetics? How does your approach minimize negative impacts?
At this time 66 Open Africa routes have been developed in six countries, 51 of which are community-based, among which there are 1906 participants employing just short of 20 000 people in more than 200 towns and villages. It must be pointed out that not all of these are ‘new’ jobs, for at the time of route launches most of the participants are already in business. It is what happens after that which determines the degree to which Open Africa’s intervention is actually creating jobs and influencing conservation. We would be in great danger of exaggeration if we were to estimate this on the early evidence available but we do have a set of indicators in place through which robust data is being collected for comparative purposes. In addition to measuring participant and route statistics and commissioning independent research, Open Africa has introduced an innovative method of getting route participants accustomed to assessing environmental impacts. This entails the identification by each route of a flagship species or feature, the status of which is then assessed by a mentor who is an expert on the subject and then monitored thereafter on a visible chart on which all can see whether the situation is improving or regressing.

How does your program promote traveler enthusiasm, satisfaction, and engagement with the locale?
If it were not for Open Africa many participants would be bypassed by travelers due to a lack of awareness of their existence. The Open Africa system includes all players who can add value, not only those with the money with which to advertise. This also enables travelers to plan their visits according to their particular interests, including otherwise little-known features and characteristics of people and places. Not having control over what travelers encounter, we encourage customer feedback and plough all comments back into the system, but each route has a locally elected forum and it is in their interest to monitor standards. As a collective, routes are only as strong as their weakest link and therefore need to pay attention to this aspect.

In what ways are local residents actively involved in your innovation, including participation and community input? How has the community responded to or benefited from your approach?
Community ownership of the routes is regarded as essential, for which reason nothing is imposed from the outside and all decisions are made by the participants themselves. Open Africa provides the framework within which they do that and gives guidance where necessary. Benefits - vast publicity, infrastructure investments, leveraged influence, emancipation of talents, sense of pride and of place, improved morale and confidence, improved competitiveness, new enterprise opportunities, warm embrace being part of a network, access to advice, soft introduction to the use and benefits of IT, and access to representation at trade shows under the Open Africa canopy.

Describe how your innovation helps travelers and local residents better understand the value of the area's cultural and natural heritage, and educates them on local environmental issues. How do you motivate them to act responsibly in their future travel decisions?
The ‘route’ approach and the creation of a route forum are a channel to action on an array of issues. Issues dealt with include the widening of supply chains, development of mechanisms for mentoring small tourism businesses, agreement on local development such as zoning, water and power supply and waste management, and tackling cultural impacts of tourism (e.g. through developing joint codes of conduct). Some routes have actually published desired codes of conduct alongside their entries on the openafrica.org website. The Open Africa project addresses reducing the effects of poverty on environmental/biodiversity degradation and ameliorating the positive impacts of tourism whilst mitigating its potential negative impacts. For example, whilst developing a route along the banks of the Zambezi in Zambia, concern was expressed that the quality of fishing, which is one of the area’s main attractors, is diminishing due to unmanaged harvesting. This resulted in discussions that deduced decisions by the local community to the effect that they can set up patrols to monitor the off take and also set up and monitor their own regulations with regard to the size of catches, both in terms of volume and weight. Basically this means checking that people do not use mosquito nets with which to trawl and that a catch and release system is practiced with juvenile fish.

Is your initiative financially and organizationally sustainable? If not, what is required to make it so? What is the potential demand for your innovation?
Since we rely entirely on donor funding, we will only be financially and organizationally sustainable for as long as we deliver a product that is irresistibly sound. Experience indicates that what we have extracted from the potential of our model so far is only the end of the beginning and we are therefore confident that it will go on attracting support, but we are deeply conscious however that there can be no let up in improving its efficacy.

How is your initiative currently financed? If available, provide information on your finances and organization that could help others. Please list: Annual budget, annual revenue generated, size of part-time, full-time and volunteer staff.
Initially our financial supporters consisted only of socially conscious corporations, but latterly some governments and aid agencies like the World Bank and European Union have become involved. For fear of creating unrealistic expectations in the early stages, we had to hold back on doing any serious marketing, but now that a critical mass of routes and a degree of credibility has been established this can change. We run a very tight ship with a staff of only nine, all highly qualified people and most of whom have to travel extensively. We could not be doing what we are without IT. Our budget for this year will fall just short of US$1m and our target for the next five years is to raise $19m.

What is your plan to expand your approach? Please indicate where/how you would like to grow or enhance your innovation, or have others do so.
Until now all Open Africa’s resources have gone into designing and refining the system; implementing it through developing routes; staffing and administration of the organisation; route networking and aftercare (capacity building); building relationships, limited marketing, and limited monitoring and evaluation. We have only scratched the surface in extracting the benefits of having and leveraging the network and there is much more that can be done. There is also no substitute for the value of the hands-on experience that is being gained within the network and we intend to spread this knowledge more effectively. Hand in hand with this is the goal to expand our own network of strategic allies, for there are many more government agencies and NGO’s whose activities can be synchronized with those of Open Africa.

What are the main barriers you encounter in managing, implementing, or replicating your innovation? What barriers keep your program from having greater impact?
Financial constraint is unquestionably the greatest hurdle, though there is nothing abnormal about this since we started out with a concept that was pure theory and needed to translate that into practice before any major support could be expected. The other primary hurdle is that grass-roots development is more intricate than most would imagine. There are myriad reasons why some people and places are under-developed and one cannot wish them away. It takes a great deal of patience, diligence and resolve first to find out what these reasons are and then to overcome them step by step. Some of these reasons are so entrenched that ways have to be found to circumvent them and that too is a challenge. Recording the above requires that the positive side must also be emphasized however, which is that people, especially those who have suffered, have extraordinary resilience. Where hope is absent this resilience lies dormant, but given something in which they can really believe lights a fire in the gut of most of those with whom we come in touch and kindling that fire is what drives this initiative.

What is the origin of your innovation? Tell your story.
The idea that resulted in Open Africa was mooted in 1990, when a general feeling of euphoria over the possibility that South Africa’s political problems could be resolved highlighted the related imperative to address the problem of job creation. With limited options to compete sufficiently successfully in the traditional sectors of the global economy to make up for the severe backlog in this connection thanks to apartheid, my objective was to find new ways of creating employment that would take account of our specific circumstances. For two primary reasons tourism was chosen as the subject for this initiative. Firstly it was anticipated that a transition to democracy would significantly improve the potential for tourism in and to South Africa. This has proved true, for in 1990 tourism accounted for 1% of GDP and 17 years later this figure is nearing 10% and rising. Secondly, I believed that nature-based tourism was going to increase in popularity in tandem with intensification in the global environmental crisis. Especially significant for rural and marginalised communities, which generally are blessed with globally significant ecosystems and biodiversity coupled with beautiful landscape features, this prediction also proved true, as indicated by the subsequent emergence of ecotourism as a major market segment. It was also clear that South Africa could not prosper in isolation from its neighbors and that therefore any job creation initiative contemplated should if possible take them into account as well, especially in giving the lead to the rest of the continent in how best to utilize this potential. Phase II With the above in mind, a think tank of eminent businesspeople, scientists and experts was formed in 1993 to work out a method of creating a replicable system of embracing especially the poor in rural and marginalised areas in this idea. This was a long process handicapped at first by financial constraint, but it resulted in the world’s first systematised method of developing tourism. The first route was launched in 1999. Phase III After implementing the programme through the development of several routes and getting the basics right in terms of procedure, this phase entailed achieving a critical mass and credibility. Over the next seven years over 40 routes were developed, meaning we could start marketing with confidence. However, reaching this stage coincided with the emergence based now on experience of certain lessons regarding development at the grass-root level of which we were previously unaware. Our own observations and research showed that weaknesses in the system needed first to be fixed. This led to the next phase described below. Phase IV With improved capacity enabled through the intervention of the national government (Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism) in partnership with the Business Trust, coupled with continued support from the corporate sector, Open Africa is presently engaged in expanding the network of routes, re-investing the hands-on knowledge and experience gained so far back into exiting routes, intensifying the marketing of the network, and widening the ecosystem of donors, affiliates, tourism and conservation agencies, governments, other NGO’s and the route participants who are collaboratively engaged in this initiative. The view taken from the start was that this is not a short-term project but one that will outlive its originators and continue growing exponentially over time. SO IT IS ABOUT JOBS, TOURISM AND CONSERVATION To be unemployed is not just a money thing, though that part of it is bad enough. Equally bad, if not worse for those caught in this trap, must be the feeling of being unwanted, not needed and rejected by society. This is not a tolerable situation for human beings, denying them self esteem to the point where they must become depressed, angry, and desperate. Tourism is one of the best options in pursuit of job creation. It is a remarkable industry in this respect, exemplified by the fact that when Open Africa was established even though Africa at the time had less than 2% of the tourism market, this infinitesimal share was estimated to account for more than 10 million jobs on the continent. Since then this number has grown to over 16,5 million. And the reason for the link between tourism and conservation is because the nature and cultural assets that are the resource base for tourism in Africa are being ravaged by the consequences of poverty in the same way as are its people, causing a critically serious downward spiral. Thus, if these assets could be turned into wealth creators through responsible tourism, this trend can be checked and a symbiotic relationship brought about where poverty reduction is promoted through conservation and vice versa.

Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers' marketing material.
Noel N de Villiers - Founder of Avis in Southern Africa. Ex CEO and Chairman of SA’s two largest travel firms, one time deputy chairman of SA Tourism, member of the Board of the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Marine Studies, member of the IUCN's World Commission on Protected Areas, founder member of the Peace Parks Foundation, founder of Open Africa, of which he is the CEO. Elected an Ashoka Fellow in 2006.

Please write an overview of your project. This text will appear when people scroll over the icon for your entry on the Google map located on teh competition homepage.
Open Africa is a collaborative movement with the vision to link the splendours of Africa in a network of tourism routes from the Cape to Cairo with the aim of creating jobs in symbiosis with conservation in rural and marginalized areas.

Contact Information
Title (e.g. Mr. Ms. Noel de Villiers
Your Job Title
Open Africa
Mailing Address
nndv@iafrica.com