TRAVEL INSIDER : Opening Travelers’ Eyes to Africa’s Big Picture : Tourism: Foreign government warnings can be misleading for countries as large as those on the African continent. Officials hope to reverse a negative trend.

Want trouble? Advise a prospective traveler that a) Kenya is safe, or b) Kenya is unsafe.

Those who take the first position are at odds with the U.S. State Department, which in a May 12 “travel warning” cited robberies and violence in or near the wildlife-rich Masai Mara game preserve, along with political unrest and street crime.

Those who take the second position incense many old Africa hands and travel professionals, who suggest that Kenya has been unfairly labeled by U.S. officials trying to pressure President Daniel Arap Moi into democratic reforms. The Irish Republican Army’s London bombings, Kenya supporters assert, don’t seem to produce comparable concern about that destination.

It’s an unfortunate and probably unresolvable argument, and an equally unfortunate prospect lies just beyond it: The possibility that Kenya’s misfortune is blinding travelers to the culture and landscape of an entire continent.

“People who were considering going are now holding back,” says Gilbert Zalman, president of Safariworld, a New York-based tour operator that does business throughout the African continent.

“I personally know of four travelers who (because of warnings over Kenya) have canceled their trips, including destinations such as Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia,” wrote Baraka Jeffries of Venice in recent letter to The Times.

“Most people don’t realize that Africa is made up of 50-some diverse countries. You can’t talk about Africa as one place,” says Karen Hoffman, spokeswoman for the African Travel Assn. in New York (347 Fifth Ave., Suite 610, New York 10016, 212-447-1926).

Even when a country is the subject of a State Department warning, says a spokesperson for the department’s consular affairs office, “it could be that 90% of that country is just great to be in. Just because you’re supposed to stay away from the border doesn’t mean that you can’t have a good time in the rest of the city, or the rest of the country.”

The spokesperson also noted that one analyst’s perceived threat can be another’s laughable detail: Japan’s counterpart to the State Department, for instance, recently issued a travel advisory for Washington, D.C., warning of prostitutes and rabid squirrels.

In any event, Kenya is only one country. Nairobi lies about as far from Johannesburg, South Africa, as does Madrid from Minsk. For curious Americans, the continent holds sites of unparalleled nature and culture.

Ivory Coast is one example. The city of Abidjan, once known as “the Paris of Africa” for its position as a French colony and cosmopolitan crossroads, this summer will host CultureFest ‘92, a celebration combining music, fashion and film with an African-American perspective.

The dates for the first-time festival are Aug. 16-29. Package tours range in cost from $1,799 to $2,099 for air fare from New York, festival tickets and 8 to 13 nights’ lodging. Local sights include Yamoussoukro, where the 525-foot-tall marble, bronze and glass Our Lady of Peace Basilica was completed last year and opened by John Paul II. (More information is available from New York-based co-promoters Selco International and Thomas Enterprises: 800-348-7200.)

“Basically we’re trying to create a cultural exchange between Africans and African-Americans,” says Lisa Edwards, vice president of marketing for E-Z Tours.

Though an April 17 State Department “notice” warned of inconveniences in Ivory Coast--increased urban crime and possible bribe requests from police on highways--many travel professionals may now be paying increased attention to the place. In early May, the African Travel Assn. gathered more than 100 American travel agents and tour operators in Abidjan’s Hotel Ivoire Inter-Continental for a tourism conference.

About 2,500 miles south and east of the Ivory Coast lies Zimbabwe, another source of unmatchable sights. The State Department has issued a “caution” there, warning of drought-related urban food shortages and potential lawlessness on the nation’s eastern border with Mozambique. But at Victoria Falls--a roaring, misting spectacle that dwarfs Niagara--authorities have reported no shortages.

Visitors to the falls, which separate Zimbabwe from Zambia, often use the 140 rooms of the 89-year-old Victoria Falls Hotel. In February, however, the Elephant Hills Resort re-entered the picture after a $50-million reconstruction.

The resort hotel, destroyed by fire in the mid-1970s, lies about 1.5 miles from the falls. It now includes 141 rooms and an 18-hole golf course with uniquely African hazards, courtesy of the unfenced game park next door: hippopotamus, warthogs and crocodiles, including one named Charlie who is said to have resided in a pond by the second hole for 16 years.

A later phase of 135 more rooms is expected to be done by 1993. Most double-occupancy rates, which include breakfast and carry bed taxes of less than a dollar, are $220-$350 nightly. (Both the Victoria Falls Hotel and the Elephant Hills Resort are operated by Zimbabwe Sun Hotels. Bookings can be made through Unirep Inc., 850 Colorado Blvd., Suite 105, Los Angeles 90041, 213-256-1991 or 800-521-7242.)

South Africa, if it continues to reform itself, is likely to receive a rush of tourism in the coming months and years. In most of the other corners of that continent’s tourism industry, however, winning over visitors is a bigger challenge.

Even before word of trouble on the Masai Mara spread, says Ronald Mracky, president of the African Travel Assn.’s Los Angeles chapter, American tourists amounted to a “terribly low, utterly minuscule” share of all visitors of Africa.

Travel to Africa did rise in the late 1980s, prompted in part by the popular 1985 movie, “Out of Africa.” Europeans, said Mracky, “basically use Africa in the same way that Americans use the Caribbean and Mexico.”

Still, a recent report by the World Travel & Tourism Council found that Africa receives just 3.44% of the world’s international arrivals (Europe gets more than 63%). And another report, this one by the World Tourism Organization, found that international arrivals in Africa fell 14.7% in 1991.

(At Kenya’s embassy in Washington, officials have declined to disclose any tourism figures. Their counterparts at home, however, have said that the number of visitors there is down 50% or more from last year.)

Africa will cost an American plenty. On May 15, cheapest air fares from Los Angeles to Abidjan rose from about $1,750 to about $1,900; from Los Angeles to Johannesburg, the fares begin at about $2,150.

The place also requires stamina and patience--few itineraries survive without last-minute adaptations--and homework. In addition to getting visas, asking their doctors about required shots and getting anti-malaria pills, travelers should call the State Department travel advisory line (202-647-5225) for nation-by-nation updates.

U.S officials, for instance, “emphatically” urge Americans to defer all travel to Zaire because of a deteriorating economy and rising crime. Libya has been closed to most Americans since December, 1981. Rwanda, relatively well-known for its gorilla-viewing, was the subject of a March 31 State Department warning over Uganda-based rebels’ violence that has included portions of Volcano National Park, home of the gorillas. The State Department urges Americans to “defer any non-essential travel” to the country.

“We would never tell a client that you’re perfectly safe going to Africa, because you could fall out of a Land Rover in the parking lot of the Hilton,” says Vicki LeBoutilier of African Travel Inc. (1100 E. Broadway St., Glendale 91205, 800-727-7207). “You have to be intelligent about it.”

But when you consider overall risks here against those in most of Africa, she adds, “I think your chances (of being victimized) are much greater in Los Angeles.”