News

16 August 2007
Training Programme at Madikwe

Equity participation by the rural poor in southern Africa’s safari lodge industry by way of land and capital asset ownership has grown in recent years, with some promising enterprises already operational. There are strong indications that key state institutions and leading firms are embracing the approach and are willing to restructure the ownership of their assets to include poor households.  

The Ford Foundation, acting through the African Safari Lodge (ASL) Program, has assisted two such pilot projects with strong demonstration value in South Africa’s Madikwe Game Reserve. These high-value African Safari Lodges (ASLs), owned by the Balete and Batlokwa communities, are now operational and performing well. The Batlokwa-owned business, for example, broke even within six months and is the first luxury game lodge to be fully staffed and managed by local rural residents. The Madikwe projects are widely regarded as models in which the region’s current stress on wildlife tourism as a strategic industry is fused into community-owned enterprises that maximize jobs, wages, lease fees and other forms of tangible benefit to rural people.  The lodges are regularly visited by other communities, technicians, policy makers, academics and students interested in learning from the experience gained at Madikwe.

This project provides an excellent opportunity to carry the approach pioneered at Madikwe into the mainstream of the lodge industry, thereby opening the prospect of replication at scale.  

The Training Programme
The ASL managed to secure additional funding from the Tourism Enterprise Project (TEP) for the implementation of a 12-month pilot skills development programme in the Madikwe Game Reserve.   The objective of the training programme was to train and register young black local field guides in the Madikwe Game Reserve.  

The aim was that at the end of the programme, the prospective field guides would have acquired the following qualifications:
•    FGASA level 1
•    THETA NQF level 2
•    First Aid certificate
•    Rifle handling & shooting certificates

Lodges in Madikwe were invited to nominate current lower-level employees (e.g. trackers, cleaners, maintenance) whom the lodge managements felt showed potential to be trained as field guides. 22 candidates were nominated from which 16 participants were selected. The training programme commenced at the beginning of June 2006 and ran for a 12-month period.  15 Students completed the training in May 2007. The programme enjoyed the full support of the Madikwe Game Reserve Park Management, who  also provided a facility for the theoretical training periods.  

The following subject matter was covered during the course:
•    Taxonomy
•    Mammal identification and behaviour
•    Bird identification and biology
•    Geology and geomorphology
•    Astronomy
•    Weather and climate
•    Reptiles
•    Amphibians
•    Anthropods
•    Practical guiding – game drives and walks
•    First Aid
•    Introduction to trees and grasses
•    Tree identification and ecology
•    Grass identification and ecology
•    Veld management
•    Basic ecology
•    Practical fieldguiding – ethics, communication, techniques
•    Shooting/Rifle training
•    Biomes, conservation management and historical human habitation

Three of the students passed their FGASA level 1 exams during either June and the remainder will write the exam during October 2007.

The ASL Foundation is currently seeking funding to repeat the training programme at Madikwe