Enhancing Urban Tourism: The role of Urban Agro-forestry and Landscaping to enhancing City Tourism in Mwanza City.

Urban Agro-forestry and Landscaping (UAL) is a term referring to farming systems and technologies to transform unused urban landforms into a beautiful and attractive piece of land by combining trees, crops, flower cultivation and as well as livestock keeping. UAL has been touted to reduce the effect of urbanization by enhancing biodiversity, food production, and livelihoods, promote ecotourism and urban beatifications as well as increasing urban resilience. To exemplify the contribution of UAL to urban tourism, a cross-section research design using questionnaires and interview was conducted in Mwanza city. A total of 114 enterprises involved in UAL were surveyed. Findings indicate that UAL are contributing to expanding tourism satisfactions in Mwanza city tours. Among the 114 enterprises surveyed 54 enterprises (47%) often receive tourists as part of Mwanza city tours while 60 enterprises (53%) often don't receives tourists at their sites. Tourists usually visits these UAL enterprises for photographing (36%), organizing events (23%), Trees and flowers collection (15%) urban farms and livestock walking tours (9%), Visiting Agro-forestry markets (9%) and others (8%). Interestingly, name and identity of some areas in Mwanza city notably Mkuyuni and Mkolani are related to indigenous fig tree "nkuyu" (Ficus sycomorus) and pod mahogany "nkola" (Afzelia quanzensis) which existed in this area. Some of the trees and flowers such as ginger bush (Tetradenia riparia), Life plant (Bryophylum pinnatum) basil "kashwagala" (Ocimum basilicum), blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus) lemon (Citruslimon), lime (Citrus aurantiifolia) guava (Psidium guajava) have medicinal values and were linked to low Covid-19 incident within Mwanza city in 2020 and are still being used for same purposes by administering either orally or through self steaming. Similarly, UAL contributed significantly to city beautification, cultural food supply, green environment and clean air which contribute a resiliency and sustainable development of city tourism. This suggests UAL is paramount concept in enlarging urban tourism and it should be incorporated in urban policy and planning in order to broaden tourist experiences in urban areas as well as reducing the negative effects of urbanization in Tanzania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]