By Dhiladhila Magazine · Issue 06

By naming community tourism a priority, the facility points young founders at the destinations Namibia already sells.

Among the sectors the NextGen Facility singles out for its young borrowers is community-based tourism, listed beside sustainable agriculture and renewable energy as a priority for the facility’s loans and incubation. It is a quiet but pointed choice, aiming young founders at the part of the travel economy Namibia is already known for.

That economy is substantial and community-owned. It is where new young operators would be trying to build.

Where the young operators would land

Namibia’s communal conservancies have turned tourism into real community income. More than N$145 million (about US$20 million) has been invested by the private sector in conservancy joint-venture lodges, which by the end of 2018 employed well over a thousand people and generated tens of millions of Namibia dollars a year for rural communities, part of it reinvested in conservation.

A young founder funded into this sector is not inventing a market but joining an established one – as a guide, a craft supplier, a campsite operator or a service to the lodges. The facility’s small, collateral-free loan is well matched to those modest, tourism-linked ventures, which need working capital more than they need scale.

The facility points young founders at a destination economy the country already runs.

For a conservancy, a lodge operator or a tourism investor, the signal in NextGen is that a new supply of young, formally trained operators may soon be looking for a way into community tourism. The decision it invites is whether to mentor and contract those founders into existing conservancy ventures, or leave a willing young workforce to find the destinations on its own.

Sources: The Namibian; Community-Based Tourism (MEFT Namibia); Conservation tourism in Namibia’s conservancies (Conservation Namibia)