LUSAKA (Reuters) -- Astronomers and tourists are flocking to Zambia for the first solar eclipse of the millennium and police are tightening security ahead of the June 21 spectacle, officials said on Friday.
Zambia expects to play host to up to 20,000 eclipse tourists and astronomers, and hopes they will spend up to $15 million, boosting the economy and the flagging tourism industry, said Zambia National Tourist Board head Agnes Seenka.
"The eclipse will help with polishing Zambia's image and will bring the feel-good factor to our country," she told Reuters.
Police will be on hand to ensure viewing of the eclipse remains peaceful. Police spokesman Lemmy Kajoba said hundreds of officers had been deployed around Lusaka, Kafue National Park and Luangwa game reserve, where most of the eclipse visitors are expected to stay.
The eclipse will also be seen in Mozambique, Namibia, Angola and Madagascar, but instability and a lack of infrastructure in some countries mean Zambia will grab the bulk of the visitors.
Flights and most hotels are fully booked, officials said, and game lodges have doubled their rates to cash in on the tourist bonanza. A Zambian eclipse management committee has asked citizens to offer tourists rooms in their homes.
Seenka said charter flights had been booked to fly in sightseers from Japan, Australia, South Africa, France and Norway.
Researchers from the United States, Russia, Ireland, Poland, India, South Korea, Germany, Slovenia and South Africa have already arrived, she told Reuters.
Professor Jay Pasachoff, director of Hopkins observatory and chairman of the department of astronomy at Williams College, Massachusetts is heading a U.S. research expedition.
Professor Ken Phillips of the CLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory leads the British team.
Journalists are also flocking to Zambia and dozens of crews from Britain, Spain and the United States have already registered at an eclipse media center, Seenka said.
Zambia has not declared June 21 a public holiday but Zambians have lined up parties and few people are expected to report for work, labor and government officials said.
A strike by 150,000 civil servants and municipal workers has forced the government to bring in private sector help to set up viewing sites in Lusaka and other towns on the eclipse's path.
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