A contribution of information communications technology to the tourism value chain for pro-poor benefits in Rwanda

Abstract

The ICT sector is perceived worldwide as a transformative and enabling tool to other economic activities to better citizens’ lives. In Rwanda, ICT integration in economic sector-activities, such as tourism with an adoption of the value chain approach, is sought to be an answer to a number of socio-economic challenges including unemployment, customer care services, and poor information knowledge. In Rwanda, ICT is sought as a business in itself and enabling tool to better, inter-economic and cross cutting activities to a growing economy. Despite mixed results from recent studies, such as Foster and Graham (2014), ICT for tourism would be an enabling tool for national and regional development, if priority focuses on ICT and tourism quality infrastructures are adhered to. It is important to indicate that there is a shortage of research literature on the evolving nature of ICT on the tourism sector in Rwanda, where it is believed to yield many off-farm jobs besides, solely agrarian activities. This study was conducted on big scale in order to facilitate the generalization of the results. 720 tourism stakeholder surveys, 10 interviews with officials, and ten focus group discussions were used to garner both quantitative and qualitative data. The mixed approach was used to minimize possible research bias and maximize the accuracy of the findings. This article presents the findings of the five provinces of Rwanda as an empirical survey, but it is reasonable to assume that the research results could be transferable to similar eastern African countries within a similar context to Rwanda. The results show that tourism stakeholders use, in one way or another, ICT throughout the entire country, and their perceptions that the integration of ICT could have positive yields in Rwandans’ daily.