Effects of tourism activities on the livelihoods of local communities in the Eastern Arc Mountains

This study presents an assessment of the effects of tourism activities on livelihoods of local communities in the Eastern Arch Mountains. The study area was conducted to communities living at Mang’ula and Msolwa-ujamaa. Furthermore, the study was guided by the following key objectives: to identify effects of tourism activities on the livelihoods of communities in the Eastern Arch Mountains, to determine challenges facing tourism activities in meeting livelihood communities and finally to identify measure deployed to address challenges facing tourism activities. The sample size was 500. Purposive and simple random sampling techniques were employed to facilitate efficient data collection. 399 respondents were reached, 393 questionnaires were returned dully filled in. SPSS software used to analyse data. The study findings revealed that there are effects of tourism activities on the community’s livelihoods. The challenge the study revealed was incapability of communities of Eastern Arc to engage in tourism activities which were in terms of low education level, inadequate skill and lack of fund. Furthermore, Study exposed that community does not have developed strategies to address challenges of accruing tourism benefits. Therefore, findings divulge that local communities are impacted by development of tourism but are nonetheless powerless in mutual ownership of the process or designing of the projects that can results to enormous direct impacts to their livelihoods. The paper calls for further research and argues that more capacity building to be directed to local communities, effective participation of local communities in the governance and favorable investment strategies to be endorsed by the government