By Mitchell Tholiwa

Mulanje, August 27, Mana: A team of rock climbers from the United States of America (USA) is training tour guides in Mulanje in rock climbing skills as one way of helping Malawi boost tourism through mountain adventure.

One of the trainers, Mario Stanley said Climb Malawi and a non-profit making organization, Global Climbing Initiative (GCI) from USA asked the team to train local tour guides to support growth of rock climbing in Malawi.

Stanley said Mulanje Mountain is a good place to develop rock climbing.

According to Stanley, the training will help hiking guides in Malawi to diversify their business as it will give them an opportunity to create two revenue streams, hiking services and climbing services.

Currently, there are only hiking services offered in Malawi.

He said rock climbing is an economic opportunity for Malawi as it will become another way of generating income through tourism.

“This has opportunity to add to Malawi's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) although it may take time for the results to start coming out but as long as Malawi takes rope climbing as a business model to bring another source of revenue, tourism sector and economy in Malawi is going to improve," Stanley explained.

He said at the meantime, GCI will be providing climbing materials to Malawi as starter packs and expressed hope that Malawi will be able to provide for itself climbing materials in five years.

Trainer of trainers, Geoffrey Mwantisi was happy to be part of the training as it will help him acquire new knowledge and skills in climbing mountains using ropes.

He added that this will be another way of generating revenue once he completes the training.

“At first I was afraid as people have been saying that rock climbing is dangerous and most people here think that rope climbing is useless. I want to encourage them, especially youths to come to us once we complete this training so that they should also benefit from the knowledge we have acquired,” he said.

Mwantisi has promised to train others who have interest in rock climbing after the training so that many young people should become rock climbing guides.

The seven-day training focused on route development, climbing instructions, gym route setting and wilderness first aid.