Thousands Attend Rwanda Tourism Week

Blog | 3/12/22

Over 2000 tourism and conservation value chain players attended and participated in the second annual Rwanda Tourism Week. IGCP represented by the Director participated in one of the debate sessions called, “Establishment of transboundary wildlife conservation area networks in Africa.” Mr. Wellard Makambo highlighted the importance and need for having uniform transboundary laws and policies to facilitate transboundary conservation collaboration as well as the need to educate and engage youth in conservation. Wellard also re-echoed the threats that mountain gorillas still face calling for combined efforts in addressing them. “Because wildlife does not know boundary lines nor require passports/ visas to move within the landscape, we need to come up with an all-inclusive conservation approach and policy, short of this, we are doomed to fail.” remarked Wellard Makambo. 

At the event IGCP also show cased the Gorilla FriendlyTM Pledge and educated the various visitors about the pledge. About 30 people took the pledge during this exhibition event.  So far 1232 have taken the Pledge to protect mountain gorillas.  Rwanda Tourism Week is an annual event that seeks to recognize and inspire hospitality and tourism players to strive towards promoting domestic, regional, and continental tourism excellence in customer experience. This year’s event had over 100 exhibitors from 10 countries and was celebrated under the theme “Adopting Innovative approaches to boost intra Africa travel as a drive for tourism business recovery”.

The International Gorilla Conservation Programme (IGCP) currently consists of Conservation International, Fauna & Flora International and the World Wide Fund for Nature. We recognise that the earth's survival is dependent on humanity's ability to maintain a healthy and balanced environment that includes all species of wildlife.