Heritage tourism in the global south: Development impacts of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, South Africa.

Abstract

Heritage tourism is an increasingly popular form of tourism across many destinations globally. Maximising the opportunities from heritage tourism is a critical policy issue in the global South. Against a backcloth of the rising importance of heritage tourism for local development agendas across the global South this paper seeks to analyse the local impacts of one major new heritage development project operationalised in South Africa, namely the Cradle of Humankind. In the international context this heritage project is a state-led, infrastructure-led initiative introduced into an economically marginal area in search of pro-poor growth. The analysis suggests that currently this anchor project has not reached its anticipated potential for energising local development.