Adventure tourism in Africa: The case of Livingstone, Zambia

Adventure tourism is attracting an increasing scholarly literature, which is particularly focused upon New Zealand, Canada and parts of Asia. Research on adventure tourism in Africa is little developed. The aim of this article is to analyse the growth of adventure tourism at the Zambian city of Livingstone, which is emerging as Africa's 'adventure tourism capital'. Since 1996 Zambia has sought to promote programmes of economic diversification, partly by marketing the country's tourism experience as the 'real Africa'. Livingstone and its adventure tourism activities focused on the Zambezi River and Victoria Falls as the leading centre of Zambian tourism. The city's adventure tourism economy has been opened up by foreign investors, mainly from South Africa, Zimbabwe and New Zealand. The cluster of adventure tourism operations is linked to the upgrading of the local tourism infrastructure, most importantly with improved airport facilities and new major South African investments in hotels. Currently, the majority of visitors to Livingstone are intra-African tourists rather than intercontinental tourists. Although Livingstone's recent expansion of tourism has benefited, to some degree, from political instability in Zimbabwe, future prospects would be enhanced by stability in Zimbabwe which would improve perceptions of sourthern Africa as a whole by international tourists.