Marvellous Mangwiro ^1* Oliver Chikuta ² Forbes Kabote ¹

• ¹ Chinhoyi University of Technology, Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe
• ² Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China

Over the years agritourism has emerged as a valuable alternative tourism route. It has also been presented as a viable strategy for promoting rural development, enhancing agricultural productivity, and diversifying the tourism product. However, despite agritourism being heralded as a panacea to tourism product diversification and rural development challenges in southern African countries, very little has been done in terms of policy development and adoption. This paper therefore sought to provide a policy analysis of agritourism among Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) member countries. These southern African countries have unique tourism profiles, thus a sample of six countries were used, namely, Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. A systematic review of policy documents, government reports, government websites, journal articles and other published material on agritourism related to the different countries was done. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the gathered data. Five major themes emerged from the study which are; national level policy recognition, institutional framework for agritourism, infrastructure, key stakeholders in agritourism and monitoring and support mechanisms for agritourism. The study findings highlight the important role played by national level policies, public-private partnerships and capacity building efforts in driving the growth of agritourism. Insights from this review paper will inform policy makers and other stakeholders on how to be more effective and coordinated in designing agritourism strategies across the Southern African Region and beyond.