The first half of 2024 saw promising signs of recovery for South Africa’s tourism industry with notable increases in arrivals from various African markets. Although overall recovery has not yet reached pre-pandemic levels, the trends indicate a steady rebound, especially in key air and land markets.
South Africa’s strategic focus on easing visa requirements, increasing airlift capacity and targeted marketing initiatives has driven this growth. Although barriers, such as onerous visa requirements, remain challenging for some African countries, progress is being made with visa waivers for select countries.
Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Kenya and Ghana stand out as key growth markets while declines in visitors from Lesotho, Uganda and Angola highlight areas that need attention.
Performance overview: January-June 2024
Tourists visiting South Africa from other African countries notably increased in the first half of 2024. Compared to the same period in 2023, overall arrivals were up by 9.4%. While still trailing pre-pandemic levels by 12% compared with 2019, the trends indicate a steady resurgence across air and land travel segments.
Land arrivals
South Africa's land markets, which include neighbouring countries, have seen a 9% increase in arrivals compared with the first half of 2023. Mozambique and Zambia lead the recovery with growth rates of 19.5% and 17.8% respectively. However, Lesotho experienced a decline with a negative growth rate of -16%, marking it as an outlier in the region. Despite the challenges, South Africa's overall market share across most of its African land-based markets has improved since 2019 with only slight declines observed in the Malawi and Eswatini markets.
Air arrivals
Air travel to South Africa shows even stronger recovery. Compared with the first half of 2023, air arrivals increased by 23% in 2024, but are still 14% below 2019 levels. The Ghana market has shown remarkable growth with a 210.3% increase in air arrivals, followed by the DRC (43.3%) and Nigeria (33.1%).
On the downside, there are slight declines in the Angola and Uganda markets of -5.6% and -1% respectively when compared with the first half of 2023.
Visa waivers drive growth
South Africa's visa waiver programme has significantly contributed to the boost in the air market. Notably, Ghana was granted a visa waiver in November 2023, which likely contributed to the phenomenal growth in travel to South Africa from that country. Kenya was granted a visa waiver in January 2023 and that market also achieved good growth.
“These waivers, combined with improved airlift capacity and targeted marketing campaigns, have proven to be highly effective in driving tourism growth from these countries,” said Evelyn Mahlaba, South African Tourism’s Regional Manager: Africa. “The visa waiver system, where applied, has demonstrated that easing travel restrictions can lead to immediate and substantial increases in tourist numbers.”
Barriers to growth
Despite the positive trends, ease of access remains a significant barrier to travel for several key African markets. Challenges such as visa requirements, limited air connectivity and the availability of products to package the African markets hinder growth.
“Nigeria, DRC and Ethiopia continue to face challenges due to the complexity and cost of obtaining visas. This has stifled growth and remains a key hurdle to expanding tourism from these countries despite strong interest in travel to South Africa,” said Mahlaba.
