The Environmental Sustainability Agency (ESA) in South Africa has a mission to secure people’s livelihoods, wildlife and biodiversity through a process of land restoration combined with the integrated development of a wildlife and biodiversity area with associated value chains. Students will collaborate with the partner and the community in developing ecotourism of the ESA sites. Combining wildlife and local communities can be the key to a better and correct development of these sites and will insure a collaboration with the communities involved.

South Africa is a resource rich country, the wildlife and nature-based tourism sector attests to suitability for wildlife farming and riches in terms of natural beauty as well. ESA is currently active in 8 wildlife parks, which were previously owned by the government since the end of the Apartheid, but now given back to the local communities. Since these local people do not have that much knowledge nor experience in the management of such parks, ESA wants to provide them the support they need. The project will focus on one or two wildlife parks and look at possibilities for ecotourism, while emphasizing the sustainability of the parks.

The project has an ecotourism focus and will involve members of the team conducting feasibility studies to determine the suitability of 2 – 3 land areas for future development of eco-tourism. The current challenge is that tourism statistics are most often outdated, and visitor flows are changing, i.e. there is an increasing number of domestic and African business tourists entering the market. In addition, we would like to know what the most optimal tourism products would be for each of the land areas (future reserves), if at all, and what level of investment would be needed to realize a sustainable tourism product in each area.

The team will collaborate with the ESA team in finalizing the terms of reference for the ecotourism feasibility studies. They will do a market research report – outlining new tourism visitors, and what products suit each category. Lastly they will draft a Feasibility Study report per site to outline the range of tourism product options, drivers needed in place to attract tourists, recommendations on introducing tourism to each site. The project wants to set an example of how ecotourism can be the most suitable and sustainable option for these new or developing wildlife parks