CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Tourism remains the fastest growing industry in the world today with a good number of the world’s population depending on the industry for survival. Tourism helps a country to protect and preserve its biodiversity and its cultural values that serves as a primary source of attraction. Tourism development is always made possible in a conducive atmosphere without war. Wherever there is insecurity, tourism development becomes a dream of itself. Hence this explains why the project helps to seek how insecurity can act as a threat to the development of tourism and how it affects Cameroon economically and more emphasis on Bamenda City Council area. This chapter shall deal with; the background study of the work, the problem statement, the research question(s), objectives of the work, hypothesis, significance of the study and the definition of key terms.

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Tourism, one of the world’s largest industries, is a frequently cited tool of development for developing countries. Economic benefits to destinations countries however often turn out to be below expectations due to structural deficiencies such as poor planning profit leakage, foreign ownership. Tourism has several sectors and ecotourism is one of the fastest growing sectors in developing countries because of its rich biodiversity. Tourism strives to benefit the local economy and the host communities and minimizes detrimental impacts on the local culture and environment. By repeatedly respecting the beauty of every destination visited, it makes tourism to be sustainable, the concept of tourism further assumes that support for tourism development can lead to a drastic influx of visitors in an area with attractive touristic potentials; Cameroon happens to be one of the worlds recognized tourist destinations. This country has been named by some scholars and some tourism experts as “Africa in miniature”. This is because this country possesses most or at least one of the facets in cultural, environmental and ecotourism and other forms of tourism that can be found in some different African countries. The country is faced with challenges in this sector of its economy such as poor road network facilities, infrastructure, poor development, poor planning, and poor execution of projects, poor management of resources, little or no attention on sustainable management, poaching of endangered species of animals, lack of government schools to train tourism experts, poor advertisement of touristic potentials by the state. As if this problems faced by the tourism sector in Cameroon are not enough, terrorism and insecurity happens to be one of the threats that has completely brought the sectors to its knees.

Insecurity In the tourism sector has brought its development to a standstill. Tourists always love visiting areas that have guaranteed security. Unfortunately out of the ten (10) regions in Cameroon, on sex of them enjoy a form of security. The other four are under attack by insurgencies. The Far North region has the highest number of national parks but is suffering from the insurgencies of a terrorist group Boko Haram. In the east region of the country, there is the Seleka rebel group from the Central Africa Republic that has made the region not a safe zone for tourism despite rich biodiversity from the equatorial rain forest zone. The North West and the south west Regions of the country are in the conflict between the separatist fighters who wants to restore the independence of former British Southern Cameroons and the government armed forces. This conflict in particular has brought under development in two regions since most of the people have fled to safer regions. Insecurity in these regions has brought stagnation in the development of tourism especially the Bamenda City Council area. If these issues are not immediately looked into, it may destroy the rich biodiversity, cultural values and artifacts that have taken people long to protect and preserve.

The tourism industry in Cameroon has faced a lot of setbacks due to the rise of insecurity. Most of the developmental projects have been hindered due this and some of them are;

• Roads leading to touristic sites are overgrown making accessibility difficult.
• Most of the hotels that serve as accommodative areas where tourist and income is generated through tourist influx is drastically reduced thereby leading to some workers being layoff from work thereby causing unemployment.
• Most shops that sale tourist products lost their customers thus resulting in income being lost.
• Persistent power cuts make the town uncomfortable for incoming tourist.

1.2 Problem Statement

Safety and security have always been an indispensible condition for travel and tourism. The last two decades in the world has witnessed an increase in insecurity. Due to terrorist acts, local wars, natural disasters, epidemics and pandemics has increased. Political situations in a given destination or in the whole world always have a crucial effect on the tourism security and safety issues. Hence booming effect is felt much on travel and tourism industry.

Unfortunately with the current socio-political upheavals in the two English speaking regions of Cameroon, areas with tourists resorts or facilities have been deserted, bridges destroyed, palaces desecrated, ancient buildings abandoned, people killed, other becoming Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) and refugees in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

It is for this reason that the researcher carries out a research on this to see how this situation can be ameliorated so that positive impact is felt on tourism industry thereby pushing the industry at upward trend. As a result, tourism destination points like SABOGA, the Bafut palace, Bali Ngema forest reserve which is an Important Bird Area (IBA), the Mbi crater, Babungo museum and the Ndawara tea estate can now be exploited and consumed properly.

1.3 Research Questions

Main Research Question.

• How is has Insecurity act as a Threat to Tourism Development in Cameroon?

Specific Research Questions

• What impact does insecurity has on tourism industry?
• How has the insecurity affected destination points and the tourism industry as a whole?
• What damages has it caused to the influx of tourists coming to Bamanda?
• How vast is the effects of this crisis to the City Council as a whole?

1.4 Research Objectives

Main Objective

The main objective of this study is to examine insecurity as a threat to Tourism development in Cameroon.

Specific Objectives

            The specific objectives of this research are as follows;

• To identify the factors that makes insecurity as a threat to tourism development.
• To investigate and know whether it has great impact to entire economic sector of the Bamenda Municipality.
• To evaluate the damages caused by insecurity in Bamenda municipality as whole.
• To bring recommendations on how the situation can be ameliorated in order to make tourism industry boom to higher heights and boast the economy of the Bamenda municipality, why not the other divisions and even the whole national territory.