Uganda targets 100,000 visitors from India in 2025

Tourism in Uganda is on a strong recovery path, with the country receiving 1.5 million tourists in 2024 and plans to reach 2 million by 2026, with a target of 5 million by 2040, Tom R Butime, Minister of Tourism Wildlife and Antiquities, tells India Outbound.

- RANVIR NAYAR

How was 2024 for Uganda?

We are moving, recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic, but the numbers now have started improving. Overall, we had about 1.5 million inbound tourists into Uganda. That also includes tourists, of course, from India and we are trying to open up the Asia market and given another one or two years, Uganda will have quite a good number of tourists from our partners and friends in the Asian countries.

We hope that by 2026, we should move to about 2 million tourists and by 2040, we hope that we can have 5 million tourists and that should give us about USD 40 billion. That is our plan and that is in our National Development Plan 4.

Which were your main markets last year?

Our main markets were Germany, United Kingdom, United States of America and I hope very soon we shall have a good number of tourists coming from China, but the largest numbers come from Kenya, since Kenya is a neighbour and automatically, we have very good inter-East African relations. Kenya has a lot of business in Uganda. There is a lot of Visiting Friends and Relatives (VFR) traffic and a lot of MICE, so Kenya is a leading source market.

Have you surpassed pre-pandemic numbers in the Indian market?