In a bid to support Uganda’s tourism, the World Bank has funded up to a fee of $148.2 m to empower Ugandan tourism enrich forest management and protect her tourism sites. In a statement issued on yesterday, the World bank stated that around $78.2m of the financing is a concessional loan, while $70m is a grant that includes $58m for refugees and host communities.
The issued funds will service efforts towards protecting tourism sites within the Albertine region and the refugee-hosting areas in northern and western Uganda. According to World Bank, the Albertine region is a pivotal part in Uganda’s tourism industry. thus contributes largely to the country’s economy as regards foreign exchange earnings and employment of citizens.
This World bank project will also fund efforts towards plantation forestry and wood value chains with the aim of enabling plantation forestry to become a strong and self-sustaining economic sector in Uganda.
Commenting about the funding, World Bank Country Manager for Uganda, Tony Thompson said that this project is timely and will provide vital assistance to vulnerable communities that depend on forests to withstand climate shocks and complements the ongoing efforts to scale up support to the tourism sector which has been severely impacted by COVID-19.
The project will also support refugee-hosting areas of northern and western Uganda, forest management in selected protected areas and aims to increase tree cover in the host community landscapes supporting agroforestry and woodlot establishment.
According to the Bank, the continued inflow of refugees combined with existing and protracted refugee situation has exacerbated a range of ongoing environmental impacts and associated challenges. Currently, according to UN statistics, Uganda is the largest refugee-hosting country in Africa and the third largest worldwide with a population of around 1.4 million refugees.
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