Walter Magaya, PHD ministry founder
ENTREPRENEUR Walter Magaya says he is planning to establish a multi-million dollar theme park in Kanyemba in an effort to promote tourism in the country.
The Prophetic, Healing and Deliverance ministry founder, who is reeling from a $27,8 million tax evasion case, said theme parks have a potential to turn local economies around through the creation of employment and development of downstream industries.
“After hearing of the Doma people and how distant they are from the social world and rarely get any visitors because of the terrible roads. My response to this was to construct a theme park, a major attraction that would bring in tourists from across the globe,” he said in his new book “The CEOs Mind” published this month.
“The theme park would leave the government with no choice but to construct the road,” he added.
A theme park is a creative garden tour clues which is built in order to meet the demand of tourists diversified entertainment and the modern tourist destination formation of planning activities.
Under the background of the creative economy, theme park is a tourism economy complex syncretising creative elements.
According to the World Tourism Organisation a theme park is one of the three trends of the development of international tourism right now and in the future.
Magaya said the setting up of a theme park would help bring development and civilisation to the marginalised Doma tribe.
Research has shown that Disneyland Hollywood accounted for supporting 2,1 million jobs and 400 000 local businesses across this country.
The industry continues to be a key driver of the United States economy, adding high quality domestic jobs and paying out US$49 billion to local businesses across the country.
Another independent study revealed that Disneyland generates US$5,7 billion annually for the Southern California economy.
“It is one of my desires that our country develops such as theme parks that generate the much needed foreign currency thereby boosting the economy,” Magaya said.
“I started my own theme park and I call it Wollywood, it is my prayer that it flourishes,” he added.
This is not the first that a Zimbabwean has dreamed of establishing a theme park in the southern African country.
In 2013, the then Tourism minister Walter Mzembi said government was planning to set up a US$300 million theme park in Victoria Falls to exploit full potential of the resort town.
He said that the government had acquired 1 200 hectares of land to construct the park he described as the “Disneyland in Africa”.
The Victoria Falls theme park was expected to house among other things, hotels, shopping malls, banks and exhibition and entertainment facilities such as casinos.
Mzembi said the magnificent Falls — named after British Queen Victoria — was not benefiting the country financially as it was being used as a transit zone by tourists who flew in to visit the falls and left without spending much in the country.
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