Teaching in Zimbabwe

During the month of March I have had the pleasure of starting to collaborate as a “facilitator” of the training programs of the UNWTO (World Tourism Organization), the international body United Nations which manages the development of towns through tourism.

My first mission was in Zimbabwe and it was an unforgettable and very enriching experience on a human level.

About Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is a complicated country.

Geographically, it is located in the Horn of Africa north of South Africa and Botswana, east of Zambia and Namibia and west of Mozambique. It has no access to the sea, but within its borders it houses one of the Wonders of Humanity: Victoria Falls.

Politically, the civil war that had begun when Zimbabwe declared its independence from the United Kingdom in 1965 did not end until 1980. From that moment on, what they call “the relocation” began, which consisted of expropriating half of the lands of the white minority to distribute them among the poorest of the black majority. Those who opposed it were killed. They also expropriated international companies, hotel groups, etc… all this until 2002, when they were expelled from the Commonwealth and an international boycott was initiated to penalize the actions and the brutality with which they were carried out. Zimbabwe’s reputation fell to the ground and they were isolated.

It is impossible to judge what was done… when you are there and you put yourself in their situation, I think that I would probably also take an AK47 and start nationalizing other people's property. But I also know how to put myself in the shoes of the whites who had half of their property taken away (we visited and met some of them) and who are surviving as best they can. That is why I say it is complicated… I do not feel qualified to take sides.

As a country, they hit rock bottom in 2010 when they broke all poverty records, becoming the country with the lowest Human Development Index in the world. The main causes were the lack of productivity on the expropriated agricultural lands, a cholera epidemic and corruption, coupled with the international boycott that put an end to the little tourism they had and to foreign investments (which they themselves had already liquidated when they carried out the expropriations).

At that point, they decided to sign some treaties, respect some human rights, draft a constitution and begin to remedy the problem. Among the resolutions was the abandonment of their currency (which was suffering from unsustainable inflation) and adopted the US dollar and the South African rand as Zimbabwe's own currency.

This is where the United Nations programme to help them begins. Zimbabwe requested help to be able to recover tourism and to be able to take advantage of Victoria Falls to promote itself internationally. Among other programmes, the UNWTO created our Digital Tourism Marketing course.

About the Digital Tourism Marketing course

The course lasted one week, with 7 hours per day for 5 days. The participants were 60 officials from the Ministry of Tourism as well as members of other tourist authorities in the country. Representatives from neighbouring countries were also invited, but only representatives from Seychelles and Mauritius attended.

The UNWTO methodology is very practical and consists of using real cases so that participants can carry out their work and then be able to apply what they have learned to their own departments. To do this, I was required to be in Zimbabwe a few days beforehand in order to visit the tourist sites that would be possible candidates to be the participants' guinea pigs.

The visits were carried out by the course coordinator Mouad Achhab (from Morocco) and myself, the first few days, and then we were joined by Karin Elgin (from Holland), the course facilitator with whom I would share the classes.

It was very interesting to visit the tourist resources around Harare (the capital of Zimbabwe). We visited several game reserves (Zimbabwe is famous for housing the “big five” i.e. lions, rhinos, elephants, buffalos and leopards), we visited rock paintings in various locations, some wineries that produce an emerging Zimbabwean wine, a sanctuary for orphaned animals, and other resources. In many of these places, they also offered accommodation services in more or less luxurious cabins, depending on their target audience. What they all had in common was that there were no customers and they were convinced that it was impossible to have a worse situation than the current one. I agree with them.

In the end we chose 4 sites and those were the ones we worked on in class. Each group of participants visited one of the sites and met with its administrators.

Each day, participants received a part of the theory on marketing strategy and digital marketing and learned how to create a part of the marketing plan for the tourist resource they were assigned. By Friday, the 4 groups had the digital marketing plans for the 4 sites and we began the presentations as if it were a court at the University. The administrators of the selected sites were invited to attend the presentations… and some of them did. The Minister of Tourism also attended a presentation and closed the course.

The results were very good, as all four projects were of high quality (it should not be forgotten that all the participants were professionals related to the world of tourism). The students were very happy with the methodology and with everything they had learned. So were the owners of the tourist resources.

For my part, I am very satisfied and I am adapting this methodology and the frameworks that we use to explain theory and practice to my classes here. So I also feel that I have learned a lot. Not only about Zimbabwe and the idiosyncrasy of a country that everyone is boycotting, but also about how to give real power to people in 5 days to change a situation.

I am looking forward to being able to participate in another mission… and also to returning to Zimbabwe, but this time with my family.

Along with these lines I have included a small gallery of images taken during the course.

I hope you enjoy them.