UGANDA WILD LIFE AUTHORITY LAUNCHES MOUNTAIN GORILLA TRACKING APP.

Tourism in Uganda is beginning to evolve with technology as Uganda Wild Life Authority launches an app that can enable tourists to track mountain gorillas.

It is aimed at selling an experience for tourists who are not able to physically visit the national parks to be part of the lives of the gorillas virtually.

The app is able to notify the user about Gorilla family growth, birthdays and migrations These updates are given by the rangers at the park who keep track or the records.

Those that would love to have this experience will have to subscribe to the app called “My Gorilla Family” It is available on Android and IOS.

The Executive Director Sam Mawanda said in an interview that this initiative was as a result of the experience during COVID 19. They had to innovate a way to continue earning as a Tourism business.

During the lock down the Tourism Industry was highly affected since visitors were not allowed to visit the animals for fear of spreading the virus to the Gorillas.

“The gorillas contribute up to 70 percent of our revenue collections. Despite collecting up to 120 billion shillings in total, we do not have enough money. Therefore, we had to find a more strategic way to market gorillas to bring in more revenue since they are our premium product,” he said.

Cameras have been installed in the parks to feed the application with content for the application, enabling any user to receive the feed directly from the parks.