into the details in this study. Various travel books and websites of tour operators). It suffices to say
that it has almost all types of primary tourist products: historical attractions, national parks
with endemic wild life and cultural and religious festivals.
UNESCO recognizes eight world
heritage sites (as many as Morocco, South Africa and Tunisia and more than any other
country in Africa): Axum’s obelisks, the monolithic churches of Lalibela, Gondar's castles,
the Omo Valley, Hadar (where the skeleton of Lucy was discovered), Tia's carved standing
stones, the Semien National Park, and the walled city of Harar.
Tourism in Ethiopia dates back to the pre-Axumite period when the first illustrated travel
guides to Ethiopia can be found in the friezes of the pyramids and ancient sites of Egypt.
These depicted travels to the land of Punt, which the Egyptians knew was the source of the
Nile, and where they traded for gold, incense, ivory and slaves. The fourth century Persian
historian Mani described the Kingdom of Axum as being one of the four great empires of the
world, ranking it alongside China, Persia and Rome (World Bank, 2006).
Modern tourism in Ethiopia can be said to have started with the formation of a government
body to develop and control it in 1961: the Ethiopian Tourist Organization. The earliest
analysis on the tourist flows and expenditures in Ethiopia was done by UNESCO (1968).
From the data covering 1963-1968, the total number of tourists was very low.
These numbers would not be considered small if most of them were vacation tourists, who
stay generally longer and spend more. However, it was noted that more than half of them
were business tourists and conference tourists that came to participate in international
meetings of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and Organization for
African Unity. In the same study, the daily per capita expenditure of tourists was estimated at
about USD 24, which was a relatively big sum. In addition, the average length of stay was
about four days, emphasizing the significance of conference and business tourism from the
total tourist arrivals data.
Recently, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism has published its number 8 Tourism Statistics
Bulletin in 2006 (henceforth MCT, 2006) which gives a fairly detailed analysis of tourists by
country of residence, entry port, purpose of visit, age, and gender and amount of receipts
from tourists for the years 2003-2005 and a good compilation of tourist arrivals from 1963-
2003. The ensuing discussion is based on the data from this publication.
The country's socio- economic history is pretty well explained in the number of tourist flows to the country. There
was a rising trend of tourist flows from 19,215 in1963 up to 73,662 in 1973, an approximately
four folds increase in 10 years. This growth was not sustained, however. Mainly because of
the political unrest and the ensuing government change and the contemporary famine (of
1973/74), the number of tourists went down to 50, 220 in 1974 and 30,640 in 1975. Even
though the data is crude and do not discriminate between different types of tourists, one can
imagine a big fall in the number of business travellers due to the massive nationalization of
private industries (including foreign companies); an enormous decline in the number of
conference tourists for the political unrest and a complete drop in vacation tourism as it was
practically unsafe for a foreigner to move out of Addis.
The failure of the number to increase above 45,000 up to 1981 could fairly be attributed to
the continued upheavals in Eritrea, Tigray and Hararghe regions and the ‘Red Terror’ in
major central towns. Though the rate was low, the number started to grow to above 60, 000
in the coming years. It would not be exaggeration if one said Ethiopia is the classic example
of how war and famine (bad image) adversely affect tourist flows. Due to the 1984 famine
and its related news throughout the world that gave birth to the famine related image of
Ethiopia to date, the number of tourists has declined from 64,240 in 1983 to 59,552 in 1984.
In general, tourism development during the Derg period was so sluggish that it took 14 years
for the number to come back to its peak of the Imperial regime. One thing that demands care
is the fact that the two 70,000 numbers are not equivalent as they mean absolutely different
share of the world tourist flow (which showed a steady growth over the decades).
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