A fish eagle calls across Lake Victoria as brightly painted wooden boats leave the shore. Across the water Rubondo Island rises as a dense sweep of forest, its canopy broken only by towering fig trees where chimpanzees move through the branches.
It feels remote, almost untouched. Yet the story of Rubondo Island National Park reaches well beyond its shoreline. Across the lake, in the fishing villages opposite the national park, the health of the island is increasingly connected to the opportunities available to the young people growing up there.
International Youth Day celebrates the ambition, resilience and potential of young people around the world. In the villages surrounding Lake Victoria, those hopes are much the same as anywhere else: a good education, meaningful work and the chance to shape their own future.
Across rural Tanzania, opportunities for many children are shaped by circumstance. Schools face challenges around classroom size and resources, employment options can be scarce, and many families depend on fishing or small-scale farming for their livelihoods. When those livelihoods become less reliable, young people often face difficult choices about their future.
Tourism alone cannot solve those challenges. But around Rubondo, it has become part of a much bigger story. Every visitor who visits Rubondo Island Camp or the National Park pays park fees to the Tanzania National Parks Authority (TANAPA). Those revenues help protect the country’s forests and wildlife, while also funding community projects beyond the park boundary. Tourism has transformed protection on Rubondo itself. Twenty years ago, poaching was common. Today, increased ranger patrols, better infrastructure and the daily presence of tourism have helped reduce illegal activity, allowing wildlife populations, including chimpanzees and elephants, to flourish.
Some of that same investment is now supporting the next generation of youth fishermen. On the shoreline at Bugwego village, a floating fish cage gently rises and falls with the lake, curious little egrets stop to rest upon it’s a steel frame, peering into the deep water within its centre. The local community recognised that declining catches were making it increasingly difficult to earn a living without venturing into protected breeding grounds, or without using illegal fishing methods. TANAPA has worked with them to pilot an alternative.
The cage will be stocked with tilapia fingerlings and fished by a local youth and women’s group. Instead of relying solely on wild fish, members will raise their own stock before harvesting it several months later. The project creates a more reliable income while reducing pressure on the park’s breeding areas.
The benefits of tourism on the local youth ripple further than the lake. A short drive away, Muganza Primary School sits among green hills overlooking Lake Victoria. Until recently, many pupils learnt outside because unfinished classrooms had no roofs or windows. With support from Asilia, the school was able to finish building the classroom infrastructure and were supported by a donation of desks, cupboards and bookshelves. For Head Teacher Simon Samuel, the changes have transformed the learning environment.
“The additional classrooms meant we could split classes into three streams and could better focus on individual student needs. This really helped improve the results we were seeing.
“In 2022, 80 of the 222 pupils sitting the Primary School Leaving Examination failed. By 2024, following the completion of the new classrooms and the donation of one hundred desks, that number had fallen to just sixteen out of 275 pupils.”
Fourteen-year-old Rehema Joram has noticed the difference in more everyday ways. Before the new desks arrived, she wrote sitting on the floor. Now she can write more comfortably and has seen her handwriting improve. Rehema dreams of becoming a judge. Like many young people growing up around Rubondo, education offers the possibility of a different future to that of their parents.
Her classmate, Kelvin Ndalahwa, has experienced similar changes. Also fourteen, he says having a desk has made it easier to write and he spends less time rubbing out mistakes.
Tourism also creates opportunities beyond the classroom. James Mazezele has spent almost three decades working as a chimpanzee tracker on Rubondo. Over that time he has watched tourism create jobs that previously did not exist.
“More people from my village have jobs on the island now,” he says. “Trackers, rangers and camp staff. A lot of youth have received scholarships to study in Arusha.”
Those scholarships open pathways into hospitality, conservation and tourism, careers that allow young people to remain connected to the landscapes they grew up in while building long-term professions. The island’s chimpanzee habituation programme itself has expanded from a handful of trackers to a larger team that now combines conservation, research and tourism, creating skilled employment rooted in the local community.
On International Youth Day, it is easy to focus only on the challenges facing young people in rural Africa. Those challenges are real. Around Rubondo Island, protecting nature and supporting young people go hand in hand, finding solutions to the challenges faced. A stronger school helps a child pursue their education. A scholarship opens the door to employment. A fish cage gives young fishermen another way to earn a living. Healthy fish stocks support future generations. Tourism helps fund the systems that connect each of those outcomes with opportunities being created when communities, conservation and responsible tourism work together.
When you choose to travel responsibly, you actively contribute towards conservation and the communities of East Africa.
