Marketing Uganda more

Last week was a very interesting one for Uganda and its image, something I have personally been advocating for, for many years. The world does not operate on reality as many educated Ugandans, though not all of them tend to assume most of the times.

Uganda was hosting a very big filming group from Germany organised by KPRN, a company hired by Uganda to market it in the Germany speaking countries. This group included a 24-year-old YouTuber called Thomas Alex Norman, who influences potential travellers to particular countries that hire him to do so.

KPRN has been marketing South Africa for the last 16 years and South Africa gets the highest arrivals (more than 300,000 a year). KPRN also handles marketing for Namibia, which is the second most preffered destination for the Germans on the continent (more than 120,000 tourists a year).

Thomas Alex Norman was born and raised in the UK but has chosen Spain as his permanent home and it is where he carries out his work around the world. He was actually coming to Africa for the first time and was shocked by the beauty of Uganda just like every other member of the group did.
Thomas started out selling newspapers at 12 years and by the age of 14, he had raised $300 (Shs1.1m) to buy his first camera. He started making small movies mainly of him and his brother and some of the films were extremely scary to even his mother.

Sometime during his upper secondary school, Thomas had to avoid his new found love for film making because he did not want to be associated with horror films.

Thomas then went to university but decided to quit after ayear because he felt he was not learning much. I personally did not like school much, especially in my high school because the system was not right for a free spirited person or call it rebel.

Thomas then decided that he needed to travel around the world and went to South America but had to return to England to work before he could travel again and that was very frustrating, according to him.

He saw people simply surviving on writing personal experiences as they explored the world and he remembered he knew how to make films. He started shooting simple but very interesting experiences while in South America and that gave him a chance to continuously travel without going back to England to work.

He posted his experiences on YouTube and got 500 views... then 200,000 and before long, he had created a small filming and editing course which he sold at $7 (Shs26,000) each, online. The results were shockingly good and he decided to upgrade the training and it worked. Thomas now travels anywhere he wants but has also made a lot of money as a YouTuber.

Speaking to Thomas made me think deeply about young educated Ugandans with lots of access to modern gadgets and the Internet but are no taking time to learn about how they could make so much money and create jobs for others. The Internet is such a big market right now and if well used, could attract massive opportunities.

The filming crew landed in Entebbe and spent one night before heading to Kidepo National Park, where they spent two nights filming. Kidepo is the only park in Uganda that gives one an opportunity to enjoy landscapes same as those in Kenya and Tanzania. Being a protected area in a valley too makes it very unique to travellers.

I have had a chance of seeing some of the filming and I cannot wait to see the bigger job.

The filming group did not only go to Kidepo but also visited Murchison Falls National Park, Kibale National Park, Queen Elizabeth National Park, Bwindi National Park, Lake Mburo National Park plus Kampala and Jinja. My guess is that by the time they are done, more than 50 million people will have seen Uganda in a postitive light.

The writer is an investment expert
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