Franko on future of tourism amid climate concerns

Some have even questioned if global warming is a reality or some science fiction.

With the recent drastic weather change, record heat waves across America and Europe, one can only wonder what impact it has or will have in the future of tourism in Tanzania.

Some people have argued that permaculture could be the remedy the world needs.

Described as the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems that have diversity, stability, and resilience of the natural ecosystem, permaculture has slowly been making its way in Tanzania.

“It’s sustainable settlement design science, it’s like a grassroots movement, it’s how you can live healthier, grow healthy food, safe accommodation and take care of the planet,” said Franko Goehse, the CEO of Permaculture Design, a company based in Zanzibar.

Zanzibar, a worldwide known tourist hub, has gained a new reputation as an “investment in tourism” destination, where multinationals would not only go to sunbask by the beach but also find opportunity to invest in the island, and property sale has been on the rise with new residential housings being built on every corner of the island.

As the world is discussing reducing carbon emissions, and ways to reduce climate change, the tourism sector in East Africa has also been innovative with an introduction of fully electric safari vehicles.

But in Zanzibar, they have gone even further. The whole Fumba town housing development’s landscape is designed by permaculture.

In Zanzibar permaculture has been in practice for the last seven years, and organisations established pushing towards a more sustainable living.

“On the larger scale it has been very successful, the idea is to have a place to live with organic food, fresh air, and your children play in nature,” Franko said.

The talk of responsible tourism is not new in Tanzania. Already, there has been a concern about tourist overpopulation in places like Serengeti.

The country is looking at attracting tourists to venture further down south of Tanzania, where visitors are not frequenting as much as the popular northern circuit.

With all these millions of tourists visiting the country over the years, our agricultural system has to be sustainable to remain fertile to be able to provide the food we need for the communities and tourists as well.

“We are polluting the soil, and the ocean, and industrial agriculture is not a sustainable solution and harms the world,” Franko argued.

“Small-scale farmers have fed the world for the last one thousand years and not industrial agriculture,” he pointed out.

Franko lived in Kilimanjaro, where he witnessed the farming system of the Chagga and exported that knowledge to Zanzibar where he is implementing at Fumba Town.

Franko owns a cafe’ known as “Kwetu Kwenu Chill”, one of the most popular beach clubs in Zanzibar, frequented by tourists and locals.

He has connected the toilets at the club to a biogas system that in turn produces the gas for cooking from the waste deposited, including the food leftover. That gas is enough to cook all meals.

What if going green could be more than a reduction of visitors to certain national parks? What if we have a target to have all the safari cars be electric to reduce the carbon emission or power our hotels and communities around the national parks with solar energy? Or even build more environmentally friendly hotels and accommodations?

Fumba Town is way ahead on the housing aspect. They are building houses with timber instead of the commonly used cement, from the tourists’ rental accommodations to apartments. “Timber is more sustainable because it is a material that you can regrow, but also a building material that is self-cooling or self-heating depending on the outside temperature” he said.

Their innovative construction design has attracted 64 countries to invest in Fumba Town, from the USA, and Europe to India.

The community is very diverse, the India Institute of Technology will have a place there, and so will the Africa School of Economics, will have a university situated there.

Franko who has been instrumental in the permaculture design at Fumba Town is no stranger to Zanzibar.

He first arrived there in 2009 visiting his brother living in Paje, where he encountered very friendly people and was moved by the white sands beaches.

As a young boy in Germany, he would often watch movies about Serengeti and Kilimanjaro and he vowed to one day visit there.

So from Zanzibar he made his way to the mainland and there he got a job as a manager at a lodge called Hatari, inside the Arusha National Park.

There, he fell in love with the environment. And in his determination to take better care of it, he started educating himself and that’s when he learned about permaculture.

His first job was building a culturally responsible tourism lodge and that’s when they built what is known as “the original Maasai lodge”.

The Maasai community was so impressed with the lodge that had all the modern enmities but stayed true to the indigenous construction techniques.

“The lodge is solar powered, inside the beds are beautiful and there’s shower you can even go with your wife and she will like the standard of all things in the rooms.

It’s a beautiful lodge and one hundred percent of the income goes to support the local community.

“It helps with sending the youth to vocational schools, car mechanics, carpenters,” he said.

The community now boasts of having two of the best English medium schools, something that was unthinkable before the construction of the original Maasai lodge.

With the success in Arusha, that’s when he went back to Zanzibar and vowed to replicate the building of sustainable and environmentally friendly housing.

Now he calls Zanzibar his home. The construction at Fumba Town will take years to complete and Franko has also invested in two restaurants, among other things, in Zanzibar.

One of the most impressive ones is the Kwetu Kwenu community market, the biggest organic community market in Tanzania, where every first Saturday of the month, sixty to one hundred local vendors with Tanzanian produce set up shop and sell their goods.

The market has been able to transform lives of the locals. The cash flow and income from tourists who purchase from the market have rejuvenated the local economy and created a lot of jobs.

Franko has travelled to other parts of Tanzania as well; he visited Iringa and was amazed by the arts and crafts the locals produced and sold. “You see a lot of culture there,” he said.

It’s clear Tanzania’s tourism sector needs more sustainable solutions to ensure its ecosystem can sustain and provide for the population even as the country welcomes tourists.

“The water used in hotels in Zanzibar could be recycled and used to water farms, and help grow food, and hotels can grow their foods to feed the visitors and local communities” Franko concluded.