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NORTH-Western Province should be developed to become the next tourist destination of choice after Livingstone, Solwezi District Commissioner Frobisher Fulayi has said.
Mr Fulayi said the province was endowed with a lot of tourist attractions but had not been exploited for economic benefits to the North-Western province in particular and the country at large.
He said this on Thursday evening after commissioning structures funded by the Citizen’s Economic Empowerment Commission (CEEC) at Wamami Lodge in Solwezi.
“The North-Western Province is the tourism next destination of choice. There is a lot of water that is not being utilised for activities like water rafting,” he said.
The North-Western is home to sources of major rivers in Zambia, including the Zambezi, Kabompo, Lunga and Kafue, which would be more attractive to foreign and local tourists.
Mr Fulayi said the Government was encouraged that private sector investors were putting up hospitality infrastructure in the area because it was helping to woo tourists to the many attractions.
North-Western Province was now highly competitive and attractive for investments following the hype in the mining sector but there was need to promote investments in other sectors.
“We haven’t done anything other than mining. But if all these are exploited, Solwezi in particular and North-Western in general will be different in the next five years,” he said.
The Wamami Lodge, which would be tranformed into a safari lodge to offer safari hunting and camping services, had been constructed on the shores of a dam in Solwezi.
And CEEC director general, Mable Mung’omba said the commission provided K50 million to enable the lodge expand on hospitality services.
Ms Mung’omba said the project had many faces as it was not just an enterprise like any other hospitality facility that had been funded in the district, but offered more tourism attractions.
The lodge was faced with the challenge of accessibility to the main road that connects Solwezi to other districts in the province, because of the poor state of the small road leading to the lodge.
Wamami Lodge is also off the Zesco grid, and relies on a generator for electricity.

By Business Reporter

Times of Zambia