Most children, hearing their parents utter the magic words “We’re going to Disneyland!” immediately imagine the dry heat of California. But the soaring waterfalls of Zimbabwe? Not so much. 
This week, Walter Mzembi, Zimbabwe’s tourism minister, revealed that the government plans to allocate $300 million toward the establishment of a theme park at the base of Victoria Falls, along with banks and casinos, according to an article in The Guardian. Victoria Falls is the largest tourist attraction in the country, and after years of economic strife and political unrest, international visitors would do much to increase the nation’s prosperity.
While this desire to accrue more wealth for its inhabitants is an admirable aspiration, the location of a theme park at the base of one of the world’s great wonders would be a travesty, teaching tourists and occupants alike to depreciate natural attractions in favor of commercially constructed, profit-driven ones.
Victoria Falls is known to be one of the largest waterfalls on earth, towering at over 355 feet at its center and stretching across an expanse of more than 5,600 feet. This landmark represents a natural phenomenon, one formed without direction or intent. It exists solely to exist and should be appreciated in a way consistent with its humble origins.
Despite its size, the simple beauty of the falls would be dwarfed by the addition of superfluous attractions — the immense sheets of endlessly cascading water would fade behind the flashing lights of casinos, the great thundering “whoosh” of the falls drowned out by the rickety shrieks of rollercoaster tracks.
It’s quite easy to understand why a theme park in an impoverished African country isn’t the worst idea. Attractions provide visitors with a fantasy, a contained world brimming with flippant frivolity, and the creation of such a “world” in sub-Saharan Africa would help disprove age-long stereotypes concerning poverty and violence. These problems plague every nation in the world, but because of ignorance and biased media coverage, most think of Africa as a violent, uneducated place filled with violent, uneducated people.
A theme park — and Disneyland in particular — could do well to debunk this misconception. According to the annual 2010 Global Attractions attendance report by the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA), Disney theme parks took nine of the top 10 spots, with Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando leading with almost 17 million visitors in one year alone.
A Disney park in Zimbabwe would undoubtedly increase the number of tourists, even more so if the park was built further within the country rather than on the Zimbabwe-Zambia border near which Victoria Falls is located. Tourists would encounter the heart of Zimbabwe rather than its peripheries, and businesses would prosper as visitors make good use of the restaurants, hotels and venues that surround them.
Along with theme parks, there exist alternative attractions that could be established to increase tourism. Zimbabwe could take notes from Kenya’s safaris or neighboring South Africa’s plethora of festivals, which run year-round and range from whale watching to jazz music to AfrikaBurn, the African equivalent of Burning Man.
Africa is a collection of countries characterized by great hope and ambition. With each day these nations build and thrive upon themselves in pursuit of a brighter future, one that’s only possible if they learn to value the past as well.