Luxury tourism in Africa under scrutiny

Luxury tourism in Africa under scrutiny

21-08-25

From the outside, the drive to attract high-end tourism to different corners of the African continent once seemed like a perfect formula: “high value, low impact,” according to several governments promoting a tourism model meant to generate income while preserving natural environments. However, new research from the University of Manchester, published in the African Studies Review, shows that this strategy is failing in its purpose and, rather than spreading wealth, it is deepening inequalities and fueling increasingly visible tensions.

The study highlights how all-inclusive resorts and eco-lodges, mostly foreign-owned, reinforce tourist isolation by keeping visitors inside controlled bubbles, while the profits flow to international agencies and imported suppliers, leaving little benefit for local communities. In this context, the jobs that are created are often precarious and poorly paid, while access to core business opportunities remains out of reach for local populations, leading to a concentration of income in the hands of foreign companies or small privileged groups.

This model has sparked strong reactions in several parts of East Africa. In Kenya, an alliance of community groups and environmentalists has launched legal action to block the construction of Ritz-Carlton’s new luxury lodge in the Maasai Mara conservation area. The heart of the dispute is clear: the lodge’s planned location obstructs a key route for the great wildebeest migration, and there is no clear evidence that an environmental impact assessment, as required by local law, has been carried out.

In Tanzania, meanwhile, protests have multiplied against the eviction of thousands of Maasai community members displaced to make way for luxury hunting lodges, leading to clashes with police and intensifying the conflict between tourism development and community rights.

Beyond these specific flashpoints, the research points to a deeper structural problem: luxury tourism development in Africa continues to reproduce a colonial logic of exploitation and extraction, in which natural and cultural resources are turned into commodities to attract foreign capital, while those who live in these territories see few advantages and suffer from environmental and social impacts. In response, local voices and academics are calling for urgent reforms: transparency in investment, rigorous environmental assessments, genuine community participation in planning and management, and tourism models that truly integrate with and benefit host communities and environments. Only then, they argue, could this sector become a genuine driver of economic, social, and environmental development for Africa.

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