Rwanda celebrates birth of 24 baby mountain gorillas

Rwandan President Paul Kagame on Saturday witnessed the 11th annual baptism of 24 gorillas born over the last twelve months.

A famous tourism flagship event known as "Kwita Izina"(attribution of name, in national Kinyarwanda language) took place in the Volcano National Park, located in the northern region of the East African country, Xinhua reported here

The mountain gorillas living in a dense bamboo forest located at the national park of the volcanoes are designated as one of the main tourist attractions with a revenue of 2,800 U.S. dollars per day, according to figures released by the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), a governmental institution in charge of investment promotion.

Official statistics from RDB indicate that visits to the gorillas have also increased significantly over the last 10 years. In 2005, "gorilla tourists" numbered about 10,500 and the number has increased over the years to about 23,400 people in 2014. The sector has recorded an increase of 4 percent in term of revenues which was estimated at 304.9 million dollars in 2014.

Since the introduction of "Kwita Izina" annual event in 2004, officials in Rwanda have initiated a number of projects dedicated, amongst other things, to promote tourism through the participation of the private sector and communities living alongside the park.

Through outreach community programs, the government allocates a proportion of 5 percent of all received receipts from those tourist activities to finance various community projects including schools and hospitals for particularly the populations living on the outskirts of the park.

Among the other programs envisaged, there is particularly the prevention of all illegal activity leading to outings insides the park, as deforestation, culture and breeding of livestock animals.

Through that mobilization campaign for local communities to join the protection initiatives, the Rwandan authorities are expecting that tourism will contribute to 5.8 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by the year 2016.

The last mountain gorillas, a species threatened with extinction across the world, are concentrated on the mountain chain that goes through Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where 302 gorillas are living in the oldest national park in Africa.

The United Nations Environment Programme says that their overall population would presently be close to 700 across the world. Endit