Asian Basic and Applied Research Journal

Partnership success comprises foundation and sustaining elements for sustainable tourism to appropriately use all kinds of resources for socioeconomic and ecological needs. However, there are relentless communal, national, and global disquiets about the likelihood of partnership for sustainable tourism. In this case, scientific research was necessary to analyse effective partnerships for sustainable tourism development. The study applied an analytical framework for literature review of the public partnership, private partnership, public-private partnership, poverty eradication, climate change adaptation, and geopolitical integration aspects whose conceptual and theoretical pertinence were substantiated with partial field evidence by the key informants’ opinions from Virunga Massif – home to the endangered mountain gorillas in Africa, comprised of three national parks namely: Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda, Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park in Uganda. This research was qualitative in nature and adopted the interdisciplinary approach that draws on sociology, international politics, development studies, anthropology, business studies, and human geography to gather and analyse the necessary data. The findings of this study instigate contentious issues regarding the successes and limits of ongoing Virunga Massif transboundary cooperation for tourism development.