Advancing Sustainable Tourism with Big Data: The Elephant Project

Uganda, known as the “Pearl of Africa” has a rich natural heritage of acclaimed beauty and relevance for global biodiversity. The abundance of wildlife species in National Parks offers remarkable opportunities to promote sustainable tourism linked to wildlife watching tourism, that can both protect biodiversity and support local communities. Uganda’s second National Development Plan (NDP II) identifies tourism as a pillar for economic growth. However, the lack of reliable, timely, and accurate tourism data hampers its development. Therefore, the project proposes harnessing big data and technology to support and fill data gaps to promote sustainable tourism. Pulse Lab Kampala and partners will develop technology tools to harness big data to fill data gaps and support sustainable tourism linked to wildlife in Uganda. Mobile records and credit card transactions data among other will be analysed to infer tourism data linked to National Parks including number of tourists, where they visit, how long they visit and how much they spend. Data analysis will be guided by the privacy and protection principles set out by UN Global Pulse. These principles are designed to ensure that the data analysed is handled with the utmost protection of the interests of individuals. Data on the economic value of tourism linked to wildlife watching will be available to inform sustainable tourism policies. Data on the value of tourism linked to National Parks will contribute to the survival of the African elephants and other species in danger of extinction, such as cheetahs, mountain gorillas and rhinos will be promoted. Moreover, the project will improve livelihoods of local communities around National Parks through sustainable development programs.