Who is selling Uganda to Ugandans?
Foreign tourists remain enormously valuable. They bring foreign exchange and support many families. Money spent by Ugandans at home does not perform exactly the same economic function. It can, however, pay a guide, keep a kitchen working and help a lodge meet its wage bill, writes Allan Kasujja
Allan Kasujja. (File)
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OPINION
By Allan Kasujja
I am writing this column from Mombasa, waiting to check out of my hotel and head to the airport for a direct Uganda Airlines flight to Entebbe. I like that we can do that. Otherwise, I would be flying via Nairobi—or going all the way to Addis Ababa just to get home. A direct flight is a small convenience with a larger economic point. Regional tourism becomes easier to sell when the journey makes sense.
I have been attending a tourism summit organised by the Uganda Consulate in Mombasa. It brought together operators from across the region to discuss how they might work together.
There is more collaboration already happening than I had realised. I even met a respected figure from Nigeria who believes East and West Africa should be much closer than they are.
Listening to accounts of Tanzanian operators discovering what Uganda could add to their itineraries was illuminating. We live next door to one another, yet still have introductions to make.
But something else caught my attention. I am staying at one of Mombasa’s leading hotels. There are plenty of visitors from the West. Yet at breakfast and dinner, I am struck by how many of my fellow guests are Kenyan. They are here, enjoying their country.
That observation has some weight behind it. Kenya recorded about 5.17 million domestic hotel bed-nights in 2024, up 12% on the previous year.
It made me think about our ambitions at home.
Tourism is the T in Uganda’s ATMS strategy, which is intended to help build a $500b economy by 2040. That is a considerable assignment for an industry whose fortunes can change with a news bulletin. There is progress. Uganda received about 1.64 million international tourists in 2025 and earned $1.62b in tourism receipts. The Government is targeting $5b in annual receipts by 2030. That requires roughly tripling earnings, through some combination of more visitors, longer stays and higher spending.
I cannot claim to know whether the current model will deliver that ambition. But I have doubts about how much attention we give the customer closest to us.
We have gorillas, extraordinary birdlife, mountains, lakes and much else that many a mzungu has paid good money to see.
Who is selling those experiences to Ugandans? We are approaching 50 million people; the Uganda Bureau of Statistics projects a population of 50.3 million by the end of 2026. That is not the same as having 50 million potential holidaymakers. Many households have more pressing demands on their money. But neither can it be a market we treat as an afterthought.
Consider a modest illustration. If one million residents each bought a two-night domestic break in a year, that would generate two million guest-nights. This is arithmetic, not a forecast. The difficult work is finding the customers, getting the price right and giving them a reason to book.
Who is doing that work? Who is putting together a family weekend with transport, accommodation, meals and activities at a price people can understand before they leave home? Who is making a holiday feel possible for someone who has always assumed that lodges are for foreigners?
Domestic tourism is already happening. Uganda’s 2025/26 budget speech reported 244,843 domestic visitors to national parks in 2024, an increase of 15.7%. That captures only part of domestic travel, but it shows there is demand to build on. The question is how to turn more of that interest into dependable business.
Could Ugandan customers have helped some of them survive?
An outbreak can frighten local travellers too. Residents are no more obliged than foreigners to holiday where they feel unsafe. But a business with customers from several markets has more options when one source of demand disappears.
I saw something of this in Kenya during the post-election violence of 2007–08.
At the time, I was hosting a radio show on Capital FM in Nairobi, owned by the late Chris Kirubi. Tourists cancelled trips, while others hurried out of the country. Kirubi suggested that we needed to sell Kenya back to Kenyans. Hotels dropped their prices. I remember paying $50 a night at a leading chain for a room that would ordinarily have cost three times as much. Kenyans took holidays they could not otherwise have afforded. Their spending helped businesses weather the crisis. I suspect some also acquired a habit that lasted longer than the discounts.
There is a limit to discounting: hotels must cover their costs. But an empty room earns nothing tonight, and tonight’s vacancy cannot be sold tomorrow. A sensibly priced domestic package can make commercial sense, especially in quieter months.
Foreign tourists remain enormously valuable. They bring foreign exchange and support many families. Money spent by Ugandans at home does not perform exactly the same economic function. It can, however, pay a guide, keep a kitchen working and help a lodge meet its wage bill.
Those are worthwhile outcomes. The summit in Mombasa showed what can happen when operators widen their circle. We should bring that same energy to the market at home, and extend it across East Africa and the rest of the continent.
We must open our eyes to what we have here—and make it easier for our own people to enjoy it. We have the numbers. We are real tourists too. Our pockets may be smaller, but we are here.
The writer is the Executive Director of Uganda Media Centre