Here are some interesting statistics.
The Maasai Mara Game Reserve in Kenya is about 1,500 km sq. The Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, which is contiguous with the Maasai Mara and is indeed part of what is known as “The Greater Mara-Serengeti Ecosystem”, is about 14,750 km sq.
So, we could say that the Serengeti is roughly 10 times the size of the Maasai Mara.
Now consider that each of these world-famous protected areas have facilities to accommodate roughly the same number of tourists, this being professionally measured in terms of “beds” rather than the number of hotels or lodges or camps. This is approximately 7,000 beds in the Serengeti and about 8,000 beds in the Maasai Mara and adjoining conservancies.
Even more interesting is the number of jobs created within each of these two contiguous environmental jewels. And I speak here of direct tourism jobs in camps or lodges. Not of the many other jobs created in the supply chains needed to provision the lodges and camps, not to mention those working in the tour companies that bring visitors to these places.
For the degree of safety, care and indeed luxury expected by tourists who book a stay inside the park, the very minimum would be “1.2 staff per bed”. This would amount to a total of 9,600 jobs created within the Mara. And about 8,400 jobs in the Serengeti.
So, would you say that Kenya has “won” the competition for tourists and Tanzania has lost? After all, despite having only one-tenth of this jointly owned environmental asset that is the Greater Mara-Serengeti Ecosystem, Kenya has still managed to create more jobs than Tanzania.
But there is more to it than that. For one, the tourists who go to the Serengeti in general pay more than the ones who visit our own Maasai Mara. Such tourists boast of a “better quality experience” in the Serengeti and claim that only in some of the exclusive Kenyan conservancies can you get that “full wilderness experience” that is available in the Serengeti.
It's in much the same way that Kenyans studying in the leading universities of the great cities of North America and Western Europe, can rarely ever be persuaded to visit the local zoo. The sight of a few dozen wild animals in cages is not one that is likely to appeal to any Kenyan who has visited the Nairobi National Park; and still less one who, on an early morning game drive, has seen much the same animals against a backdrop of a glorious African sun rising over the Mara plains.
And of interest too is that while you would think that there is pressure in Tanzania to create more jobs and “fulfil the potential” of the Serengeti in matters of job creation, actually it is the reverse that is true. The Serengeti, as far as I know, will continue to pursue sound ecological policies.
It is in Kenya that there is pressure for the reduction of the tourism establishments inside the Maasai Mara, by a reversal of many years of reckless issuing of licences for new camps and lodges, with little thought given to the long-term environmental implications.
The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us to “follow the science”. Well in the case of the Maasai Mara Game Reserve, the scientific consensus among environmentalists is that we need to reduce the number of hospitality facilities inside the Maasai Mara and compensate for this by the creation of more conservancies in the adjoining Maasai ranches.
At this time, it may seem highly implausible that any tented camp or game lodge in the Mara – employing Kenyans and catering to wealthy visitors – could ever be uprooted. But stranger things have happened. During the Moi presidency, road reserves were routinely “allocated” as viable residential plots. But we later saw many fine houses built on such former road reserves brought down by bulldozers.
Well, all this has crucial implications to the development of conference tourism, which is a growing sector within the region and an area of perceived competition between Kenya and one of its neighbours: not Tanzania or Uganda but Rwanda.
This I shall get into next week.
