The Gambian Tourist Value Chain and Prospects for Pro-Poor Tourism

Tourism in The Gambia: International ‘Best Practice’ in Poverty Reduction & Pro-Poor Growth Through Tourism
Draft Report (Friday 22 nd December 2006)
If all Gambian households supplying agricultural produce to hotels and restaurants had a
marketable output similar to the level found during the survey and there was a 70% mark-up
between farm gate and hotel kitchen prices this would imply supplying the £1.7m sales of
locally-sourced food to hotels and restaurants (see Annex F) generates farm-gate sales of
about £1.0m. Farm gate sales of £1.0m could, in turn, impact directly upon about 2 600
households if the suppliers to the tourism agricultural supply chain shared similar
characteristics to the producers surveyed during the survey of GiG beneficiaries.
Clearly this analysis is rudimentary. Whilst the scale of the locally-sourced food market
looks plausible – and is supported from several different sources – the possible number of
beneficiaries of this local procurement is based upon much more shaky assumptions. There
is no reason why, for instance, people supplying fish to the tourism sector have a similar
sales per household compared with a small survey of horticultural producers.
Notwithstanding this, the analysis suggests that one of the biggest pro-poor impact from
tourism on the poor – in terms of the number of households affected – either is or could be
through agricultural linkages. It is also the case that agricultural supplies travel rather more
extensively than tourists in The Gambia. Therefore the pro-poor impacts of agricultural
supplies reach areas, like the impoverished North Bank District, that derive little other
benefit from tourism.
There is emerging ‘best practice’ experience relating to aspects of market facilitation
exercises in the agricultural supply chain that are described in Annex D - namely by working
on both the supply and demand end of the supply chain to facilitate a viable market
interface between poor rural farmers and large urban hotels and restaurants. The pro-poor
impact of sales of agricultural produce to the tourist sector would obviously be enhanced if
the local content of agricultural supplies increased higher than the current 45% to 50%
figure. There have been calls to prevent the tourist sector importing agricultural products
that are available locally. This approach is not recommended because it is a coercive
approach that limits the freedom of hotel and restaurant managers to select the best goods
available. It also contradicts Gambian commitments to liberalisation and diverts attention
from an enabling approach of supporting Gambian farmers, through GiG-like interventions,
to supply the tourist sector.
Box 8: Pro-Poor Tourism Regulatory Issue # 7
As probably the most broad-based linkage between the tourist sector and the poor in the
destination, there is a strong case for scaling up the support currently provided by NGOs
using charitable donations to work with small farmers and assist them in accessing hotel
and restaurant agricultural supply chains on mutually satisfactory terms.
An important regulatory function for government is to regulate the quality of food served to
tourists in the interests of tourist health. The legal annex to the Master Plan suggested that
tourists are not currently being adequately protected from unhygienic foodstuffs. This could
have an important developmental impact because unhealthy food could encourage tourists
to eat at the more up-market establishments which, the hotel survey found, tended to have
the highest propensity to import.
Box 9: Pro-Poor Tourism Regulatory Issue # 8
Government needs to protect tourist health by regulating the quality of food preparation and
storage effectively to minimise the risk of ill-health.
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