ALL is set for the fourth edition of the annual Kariba October Festival (KOF) to be held tomorrow, courtesy of Zim Events as part of its strategy to promote and market Kariba as a safe tourist destination.
The event will kick off with an eight-hour boat cruise on Lake Kariba and end with a musical concert to be headlined by dancehall chanter Killer T and urban groover Trevor Dongo.
Rocking it on the turntables will be DJ Raydiz, DJ Raza, Merciless Zimbabwe and Kariba resident DJ Sir Rollex, among others.
Popular radio personalities Tinashe Chikuse and Pathisani Sibanda will be the emcees at the music concert.
Festival organiser Bernard Chambati told NewsDay Life & Style that the main objective of the event was to market Kariba among locals and foreigners through arts and position the resort town on the world tourism map.
“Zim Events’ long-term strategy is to develop KOF to become an annual festival recognised both locally and internationally that will bring more tourists to Kariba, hence incorporating more tourism stakeholders on board that provide boat cruise and accommodation services,” he noted.
The festival is a unique event on the tourism calendar that we host in October which is a peak period for the tourism sector in Kariba. The pricing model will be affordable and attractive to the locals.”
Chambati said some of the activities to take place at the festival included parasailing and island docking.
Kariba Tourism and Business Indaba co-ordinator Cephas Shonhiwa noted that the resort town needed more of such events if tourism products and services are to be well promoted.
“Such events have the potential to help the Zimbabwean government efforts of promoting domestic tourism, hence contributing to the locals through tourist revenues and will embrace empowerment of locals in Kariba,” he said.
“We want to see people frequenting Kariba since it has the largest man-made waterbody in terms of volume. I also encourage people from all corners of the world to attend and support this festival.”
Last year thousands of guests attended the festival that was held over two days.
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