WALK GOOD JAMAICA-From Tourism Extraction to Community Restoration

From Tourism Extraction to Community Restoration: Rastafari and Indigenous Jamaica Reclaim the Journey

By Karen “Empress Zaria” Francis, M.Ed.

Project Lead, Walk Good Jamaica

Nearly ten months have passed since I last wrote for Rastafari Vibes. Much has happened in that time—to Jamaica, to our communities, and to the vision many of us carry for a more self-determined future.

I return to these pages at a moment when Jamaica is once again asking a fundamental question: Who benefits from Jamaica?

Few industries make that question more urgent than tourism.

Jamaica has built one of the most recognizable tourism brands on Earth. Our sea. Our mountains. Our music. Our food. Our language. Our herbs. Our athletes. Our spirituality. Our Rastafari culture. Our African heritage. Our people.

The world comes to experience Jamaica.

But after the visitors have gone home, how much of the wealth generated by the Jamaican experience actually remains in Jamaican hands?

That is the question behind Walk Good Jamaica.

A Tourism Giant—But Who Owns the Value?

Tourism is indispensable to the Jamaican economy. In 2025, despite the devastation and disruption associated with Hurricane Melissa, Jamaica welcomed approximately 3.7 million visitors and generated an estimated US$4 billion in foreign-exchange earnings. By May 2026, more than one million stopover visitors and approximately 664,000 cruise passengers had already arrived, even while portions of the country’s hotel inventory remained offline.

The Government is now thinking even bigger. Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett has announced a long-term “10x10x10” ambition: 10 million visitors and US$10 billion in tourism earnings within ten years.

Those are extraordinary numbers.

But they make the ownership question even more important.

If ten million visitors come to Jamaica, who will supply their food? Who owns the rooms in which they sleep? Who owns the buses transporting them? Who provides their wellness services? Who tells them the history? Who sells the art? Who owns the booking platform? Who processes the payment? Who controls the data? And where does the visitor’s dollar finally come to rest?

For generations, much of Caribbean tourism has operated through an externally oriented model: large resorts, concentrated coastal development, imported goods, international booking systems and supply chains in which local communities often participate primarily as labour rather than as owners.

That is what we mean when we describe tourism as potentially extractive.

Extraction does not mean that tourism produces no benefit. It clearly does. Tourism employs Jamaicans, generates foreign exchange, supports transportation, agriculture, entertainment and thousands of businesses.

The problem is how the value is distributed.

And this is no longer simply a critique being made from outside government.

In May 2026, Minister Bartlett said Jamaica currently retains close to 40 per cent of tourism earnings and argued that the country needs to move toward retaining 50 or even 60 per cent. He specifically called for stronger Jamaican supply capacity and greater local ownership. Jamaica’s Tourism Linkages Network was itself created to increase the consumption of locally supplied goods and services and reduce tourism-sector leakage.

That is a remarkable opening.

Because the question is no longer whether Jamaica should increase local participation.

The question is how.

Walk Good Jamaica proposes one answer:

Move communities from the edge of tourism’s supply chain toward the centre of ownership.

What Does “Walk Good” Really Mean?

Long before it became the name of a tourism initiative, “Walk Good” belonged to Jamaica.

It is one of those deceptively simple expressions through which Jamaican language carries an entire philosophy.

When Jamaicans part company, we do not always simply say goodbye.

We say:

Walk good.

The Jamaica Tourist Board describes it as a departing salutation carrying the meaning “good bye, take care, safe travels.” Contemporary Jamaican-language references similarly define it as a wish that the departing person remain safe and journey well.

But anyone raised within Jamaican culture knows that the expression carries something deeper.

“Walk good” means mind how you travel.

Proceed carefully.

Keep yourself.

Go with protection.

Reach safely.

Remember where you come from.

And return well.

Its precise first appearance is difficult to date because, like so much Jamaican language, the phrase lived in oral culture before anyone thought to document it academically.

We can, however, trace its longstanding presence in Jamaican cultural expression. By 1980, Michael Thelwell’s Jamaican dialogue in The Harder They Come included “Walk good” naturally as a farewell, suggesting an expression already sufficiently established to require no explanation for Jamaican readers.

The phrase would also find its way into Jamaican poetry and literary scholarship. Scholars have described “walk good” not merely as vocabulary but as an expression carrying a distinctly Jamaican way of seeing and being—language tied to journey, memory, identity and belonging.

That cultural inheritance is why the name matters.

Walk Good Jamaica is not simply asking tourists to visit Jamaica.

We are asking Jamaica to reconsider how the journey itself is organized.

Where do you walk?

With whom?

Who tells the story?

Who owns what you experience?

Who benefits because you came?

And what condition do you leave the community in when you depart?

A visitor should be able to walk good.

But the community should also be better because that visitor walked through it.

From Being the Attraction to Owning the Economy

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For Rastafari, this conversation carries particular weight.

Rastafari has contributed immeasurably to the international identity of Jamaica.

Reggae, locks, Ital living, natural wellness, herbal knowledge, African consciousness, red-gold-and-green imagery, language, music and the image of His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie I have travelled across the world.

Yet the communities from which much of this cultural capital emerged have not always enjoyed proportional ownership of the economic systems built around it.

There is something fundamentally wrong when a people’s culture can become internationally valuable while the people themselves remain economically marginalized.

Walk Good Jamaica seeks to change that equation.

Not by excluding the established tourism sector.

Not by attacking hotels.

Not by replacing Jamaica’s successful tourism institutions.

But by building a parallel and complementary community-owned supply chain through which Rastafari, Indigenous communities, farmers, fisherfolk, artisans, educators, wellness practitioners, transportation providers, cultural historians, accommodation providers, musicians, chefs, small businesses and community organizations can participate as economic actors.

The objective is to shift the language from:

employment to enterprise;

participation to ownership;

tourism product to community asset;

cultural display to cultural authority.

This is what community tourism can become when connected to cooperative economics.

Jamaica’s own Ministry of Agriculture has recently highlighted community-driven agritourism as a model capable of retaining more tourism expenditure within the country while providing visitors with more authentic experiences.

Walk Good Jamaica intends to push that logic further.

Pinnacle Was Already an Economic Lesson

None of this is entirely new to Rastafari.

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Before the terminology of sustainable development, community-based tourism, circular economies and local supply chains became fashionable, there was Pinnacle.

Under Leonard Howell, Pinnacle represented one of the earliest large-scale attempts to develop an economically self-reliant Rastafari community in Jamaica.

People farmed.

People produced.

People traded.

People organized community.

And, critically, Rastafari attempted to create an economic space in which the community’s survival did not depend entirely upon systems controlled by others.

The importance of Pinnacle is therefore not only religious or historical.

Pinnacle is also an economic-development case study.

Today the Government itself recognizes Pinnacle’s significance as Rastafari heritage and has previously committed to its development as a national heritage site.

Walk Good Jamaica asks:

What happens when we take that history seriously as development knowledge?

What would a twenty-first-century version of community economic self-reliance look like if we combined ancestral knowledge with cooperative structures, digital technology, artificial intelligence, international tourism and global trade?

That question sits at the center of our work.

Education Before Economics

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For me, Walk Good Jamaica did not begin as a conventional travel company.

It emerged from education and action research.

My professional journey has taken me through more than three decades of English-language education, teacher training and curriculum development, including service as a United States Department of State English Language Fellow in Yaoundé, Cameroon, during 2022–2023.

During that Fellowship, my work explored how blended learning, project-based learning and emerging educational technologies could help learners turn knowledge into practical action.

That philosophy followed me home.

Education should not merely prepare people to participate in an economy someone else designed.

Education can help communities design economies of their own. Join Us

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That principle also aligns with work being carried forward through the Haile Selassie I JAH RasTafari Royal Ethiopian Judah Coptic Church.

Before his transition, Royal Priest Wesley Kelly repeatedly emphasized a mandate to advance education in the name and legacy of His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie I.

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From that mandate came the development of the Haile Selassie I MetaVersity—a technology-enabled teaching and learning environment intended to make education, cultural knowledge, professional training and economic-development resources more accessible across Jamaica, the Caribbean, Africa and the African Diaspora.

Now those pieces are being connected.

Church mandate.

Education.

Technology.

Action research.

Artificial intelligence.

Cooperative economics.

Tourism.

Community development.

Walk Good Jamaica becomes the living laboratory.

Four Living Initiatives

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The developing Walk Good Jamaica model brings together four interconnected areas:

Business English. Cooperative Economics. Climate Reparations. Community Tourism.

They may appear separate.

They are not.

A farmer who cannot communicate with an international buyer faces a trade barrier.

A cultural practitioner who has no booking platform faces a market-access barrier.

A community with no cooperative purchasing power faces a capital barrier.

A woman whose home was destroyed by a hurricane faces a climate-resilience barrier.

A Rastafari elder who possesses extraordinary historical knowledge but has no mechanism through which that knowledge generates income faces an ownership barrier.

Walk Good Jamaica is being designed to connect those dots.

The platform is intended to allow communities and cooperative members to present their projects, list services, develop tourism experiences, access training, establish trade relationships and connect community needs with visitors, investors and partners.

Artificial intelligence can assist with translation, Business English, marketing, itinerary development, digital storytelling, research, project design and international communication.

But technology is not the destination.

Human development is.

Turning Jamaica Into the Classroom

The first Walk Good Jamaica experiences are being designed as more than vacations.

They are EDventures—education through experience.

Visitors may encounter Jamaica through Rastafari history, Maroon and Indigenous heritage, natural wellness, agriculture, rivers, music, community enterprise and the lived experiences behind the international Jamaican brand.

Places being explored within the developing network include Pinnacle, Trench Town, Coral Gardens and White River, connecting cultural history with present-day community development.

White River, for example, offers an extraordinary convergence of water, agriculture, Rastafari culture, wellness and community enterprise. Even Jamaica’s official tourism promotion acknowledges the area’s connection to Jamaica’s earlier Indigenous history and its later relationship to the colonial agricultural economy.

Trench Town offers another living classroom.

Reggae cannot be fully understood by visiting Jamaica and bypassing the communities that created it.

Earlier this year, our work in Trench Town began developing an educational tourism model connecting Rastafari heritage, eco-tourism, the blue economy, youth development and global hospitality training.

Walk Good Jamaica expands that concept nationally.

Tourism After Melissa Must Be Different

Hurricane Melissa made the economic vulnerability of tourism communities painfully visible.

When tourism infrastructure closes, workers lose wages.

Craft vendors lose customers.

Drivers lose fares.

Small farmers lose buyers.

Families already living close to the economic margin are pushed further toward crisis.

Following Melissa, tourism workers and craft vendors described precisely that loss of daily income as hotels closed and visitors disappeared.

This makes tourism recovery about much more than reopening hotel rooms.

Recovery provides Jamaica with an opportunity to ask:

Can the rebuilding of tourism also rebuild communities?

Walk Good Jamaica says yes.

That is why the initiative is also connected to the development of demonstration eco-communities for women, children and elders, natural-health and wellness experiences, community agriculture, cooperative enterprises and climate-reparations advocacy.

Tourism can become part of the mechanism through which communities build resilience rather than merely survive between disasters.

A visitor’s accommodation payment can support locally owned housing.

A meal can support a farmer.

A wellness treatment can support a practitioner.

A tour can support a historian.

Transportation can support a community driver.

A heritage experience can help preserve a sacred site.

A booking can become development capital.

This is what we mean when we say:

Every Visitor Leaves Restored. Every Visit Builds Community.

A Cooperative Behind the Journey

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For this reason, Walk Good Jamaica is also moving toward the establishment of the Walk Good Jamaica Community Development Cooperative Society Ltd.

The cooperative framework matters.

A platform alone does not guarantee economic justice.

Neither does tourism.

Ownership structure matters.

The objective is to build a cooperative mechanism through which participating communities and enterprises can share infrastructure, training, market access, technology, tourism opportunities and eventually broader regional and international trade opportunities.

Rastafari and Indigenous community representatives have begun participating in the founding process, with weekly Walk Good Jamaica Founding Members Reasonings providing space for communities to present projects, identify needs, develop partnerships and help shape the emerging cooperative.

This is not intended to create another organization that speaks for communities.

The goal is to build infrastructure through which communities can speak, trade and negotiate for themselves.

That distinction is critical.

From Jamaica to CARICOM, Africa and the Diaspora

The vision does not end at Jamaica’s shoreline.

Jamaica sits inside a much larger African-Caribbean economic and cultural geography.

CARICOM.

The African Union.

The Sixth Region.

Ethiopia.

Ghana.

The wider African Diaspora.

For Rastafari, those connections are not theoretical.

They are part of our history and identity.

Walk Good Jamaica therefore sees tourism as the beginning of something larger: trade corridors between communities.

Imagine a cooperative marketplace in which Jamaican farmers, herbalists, designers, educators and cultural practitioners can interact with counterparts across the Caribbean and Africa.

Imagine student exchanges.

University partnerships.

Heritage research.

Wellness tourism.

Agricultural collaboration.

African and Caribbean travel routes.

Digital education.

Creative-industry partnerships.

And cooperative trade.

Tourism becomes an entry point.

Economic self-determination becomes the destination.

The Experiment Begins

Walk Good Jamaica is deliberately beginning as action research.

We will test.

We will collect data.

We will listen.

We will revise.

We will determine what works for communities and what does not.

Initial activities include Rastafari heritage experiences, Reggae on the River, women’s eco-community development, natural health and wellness programming, and a pilot Walk Good Jamaica Heritage–Eco–Wellness Tour scheduled for August 30 through September 3, 2026.

Monthly pilot experiences can then provide the evidence needed to improve the model.

The question we intend to study is straightforward:

Can tourism be deliberately redesigned so that more of the wealth created by Jamaican culture remains with the Jamaican communities that create that culture?

If the answer is yes, we will have developed something far more important than another tour package.

We will have begun building a replicable model.

Walk Good

There is a beautiful irony in the name.

For generations, Jamaicans have sent people away with the words:

Walk good.

Now we are using those same words to invite the world in.

But this time, the invitation carries conditions.

Come see Jamaica.

Come hear our music.

Come sit beside the river.

Come eat what we grow.

Come learn our history.

Come experience our wellness traditions.

Come meet Rastafari.

Come meet Indigenous Jamaica.

Come reason.

Come trade.

Come invest.

Come learn.

But when you come, walk good.

Respect the land.

Respect the people.

Respect the culture.

Know where your money goes.

Leave value behind.

And when you return home, carry something deeper than photographs.

Carry relationship.

Carry knowledge.

Carry responsibility.

Because Jamaica does not need another tourism model in which communities merely watch prosperity drive past their gates.

We need an economy in which the farmer, the fisher, the artisan, the healer, the teacher, the elder, the youth, the Rastaman, the Rastawoman and the Indigenous community can stand inside the tourism economy not merely as the attraction—

but as owners.

That is the journey we are beginning.

That is the research.

That is the cooperative.

That is Walk Good Jamaica.

And perhaps the old Jamaican blessing has been telling us the development strategy all along:

Know where you are going.

Know who walks with you.

Leave the road better than you found it.

And Walk Good.