In my previous articles, I have been religiously stressing the importance of marketing in almost every discipline.
I have been pointing out that there is no programme, project, activity, business or organisation that can be successful without marketing.
Just like no human being would be able to survive without blood. The same can be said of marketing to every organisation.
For those of you who may wonder what is meant by this, I will elaborate by stating that marketing is the only function that earns organisations their income and revenue. Marketing is the only function that makes businesses be viable and be able to make their return on investment.
In business and economic terms, this is often referred to as a profit centre.
Having reflected on this fact, let us now look at one sector in this country that has for so long been sidelined overlooked and marginalised, yet if taken seriously and given all the support has the potential to make substantial contributions to the country’s national domestic product (NDP). Seven years ago it was recorded that more than US$350 000 was generated from some wildlife sector.
To set the ball rolling, I will pose this question, how many of us enjoy game or bush meat? Remember the name given to game meat in the UNIP era? Well my assumption is that most of us were young then.
Incidentally, about 70 per cent of the Zambian people regard game meat a delicacy.
This being the case, can you imagine that if there were no interventions by Government and its stakeholders, by now all wildlife would have diminished. That is not to mention that there are also issues to do with human and animal conflict.
Most of our relatives in the villages have been fighting over land and space with wild animals, a situation which only makes wildlife very unpopular among many affected people.
Nevertheless, wildlife just like other natural resources are our heritage and God’s natural gift, which if well taken care of and preserved should bring this country some good foreign exchange and good Government revenue over time.
This assertion, however, should not be taken to mean that there are presently no efforts being made in this direction.
Government’s efforts can be seen through the Ministry of Tourism, the Tourist Board of Zambia and the Zambia Wildlife Authority.
Regardless of these institutions’ efforts, we still have many challenges and problems associated with wildlife conservation. Among these problems is the problem of poaching for meat, for trophies, displacement of wildlife through the encroachment by humans into game areas.
These problems are too enormous to be handled by the government alone and this necessitates the need for other stakeholders, as well as players to come in and support the already existing Government initiatives and structures which have been already put in place. This is where the non-governmental organisations and the corporate sector come in.
The non-governmental wildlife conservation organisations have a major and a big role to play in helping the established government institutions in educating and sensitising the publics on the need for wildlife conservation.
I am certain that most of us will agree that many Zambian people lack information on matters to do with wildlife conservation, as they do not see the long term benefits. I recently had a chat with a lady who has great passion for wildlife conservation, who during our conversation brought out issues which gave me a food for thought.
She asked me to envisage the population of wildlife in this country in the next coming 20 years given the rate at which people are involved in poaching.
The question reminded me of a particular friend who is has made game haunting a hobby, the man has a collection of haunting short guns and even has a calendar on hunting activities.
I believe that the Government earns quite some good revenue from the registered safari hunters.
However, there is still a big question about the extent to which the money earned from wildlife benefits the local communities and whether it is being used to improve their standards of leaving.
The wild life conservationists have been trying through various initiatives namely building schools and improving health services for local communities in game reserve areas, through sourcing of funding from the donor communities and through other fund raising ventures.
What should be noted, though, is that wildlife conservation efforts have not been easy where marketing has to be conducted on almost zero budgets.
It has been noted for instance, that most funders usually strictly pledge their support towards non-marketing activities.
Not being profit-oriented in their goals, it is very difficult for wildlife conservationists to implement effective marketing plans which should ideally help to promote their causes to their targeted audiences or markets.
Remember that for any project or activity to be successful and be able to make an impact, it must be able to promote its causes, services or ideas by advertising, direct marketing and branding.