2. Introduction

Project Background
Livelihoods in Lekgophung
The ecotourism sector context

Project Background
The Lekgophung Lodge has origins in the DFID-funded Madikwe Initiative, which is providing support to strengthen local communities bordering on the Madikwe Game Reserve in the North West Province of South Africa. The project's purpose is to capacitate residents of 3 local villages, including Lekgophung village, to maximise returns from the Game Reserve, while the ultimate goal of the initiative is to establish sustainable social, environmental and economical development in the Madikwe area.

From the inception of the Madikwe Game Reserve in 1991, a progressive intention was to develop the park as a vehicle for promoting conservation with local economic development, built on a partnership between the state, the private sector and local communities.

A 1997 study identified a profound disparity between the power exercised by the state / private sector lodge developers and operators on the one hand, and communities on the other. In contrast to the other partners, communities had only weak and unenforceable rights to benefit from the reserve.

At the request of the North West Province conservation authority, the North West Parks and Tourism Board (NWPTB), the Madikwe Initiative came into being in 1997 with support from DFIDSA to address this problem. Implementation took place in an initial 2 year period to mid-2000. Following a review, an extension was adopted and an exit strategy was implemented to March 2002.

Livelihoods in Lekgophung
Household livelihoods in these communities depend largely on remittances from employment and social pensions and transfers from outside the area, with a large percentage living and finding employment outside of the area. This study further found that local economic activity focussed on agriculture, in particular extensive livestock production. However, (as in Botswana, on which this area borders) livestock farming activities are skewed, in that 50% of households owned no livestock at all, and of those that did, 75% owned fewer than five animals each, while a small minority owned more than 100 head each. The average unemployment rate was 34%.

A study in 1998 found that "since the study by Perkins (1993) livelihoods have deteriorated in the 3 villages despite the presence of Madikwe". This negative trend is further indicated by a study in 1999, which showed unemployment in Lekgophung up to 58%, broadly in line with the national trend. Livelihood priorities in Lekgophung also reflect a common pattern in South African rural areas, prioritising jobs and wages.

A study by Setplan in 1991 compared the economic rates of return of two land use options for a large area of degraded white-owned commercial farms in the Madikwe area: extensive cattle ranching and wildlife-based conservation tourism. The rates of return from the latter were much higher, for example, tourism was projected as having the potential to generate more than 1200 jobs, as compared with only 80 lower-paying jobs from cattle ranching. This precipitated the conservation authority's action in purchasing the large area of white-owned commercial farms to establish the 75 000 ha Madikwe Game Reserve.

The ecotourism sector context
In recent years, southern Africa's ecotourism industry has come to assume a strategic importance in the political economy of the region. Tourism enterprises based on the natural attractions of the region are today widely regarded as key drivers for job growth, wealth creation and economic empowerment, particularly in impoverished rural areas. Ecotourism's contribution to sustainable development is however often compromised by high rates of leakage. In rural southern African settings, external commercial interests typically capture a disproportion of the benefits linked to tourism.

Part of the solution to this problem is located in the various land reform programs of the region that aim to create land and resource rights for those who were denied them under colonialism. Thus, various southern African countries have experimented with community-based natural resource management programmes, which in some cases have led to promising results, with previously dispossessed rural residents acquiring significant equity in viable ecotourism enterprises. These programmes, however, have rarely targeted southern Africa's core protected areas, more often focusing on areas adjacent to the region's major public parks. Typically, ownership of core conservation assets as well as responsibility for park development and management remain vested in the state but commercial development and management - primarily lodge tourism - are outsourced to the private sector, and the state is reluctant to cede resource rights to local rural residents as this entails loss of financial returns.

Under this arrangement, which has become widespread in a context of economic liberalisation, resource fees generated by commercial enterprise are appropriated by the state in an effort to optimise cost recovery to the point where the protected area breaks even or generates a surplus for the fiscus. The new approach to public conservation thus sees the state seeking to offset the costs of protected area management through the optimal harvesting of returns from commercial development on the land. A critical consequence of the approach is reluctance by the state to cede resource rights - and rentals - in core protected areas to local rural residents. On the contrary, the state typically insists that local interests compete in an open market for access to commercial opportunities and pay competitive rents for the use of the land.