A new global investment promotion campaign to attract foreign direct investment – including tourism – into Cape Town and the Western Cape, was launched on January 30.

Partners in the campaign include the Western Cape Government, the City of Cape Town, InvestSA One Stop Shop Western Cape and Wesgro.

Their collaboration will ensure that one message is being communicated to investors by both business and government, explained Wesgro CEO, Tim Harris.

This sense of teamwork drove the successful 2019 investor confidence campaign and it aims to do the same this year. “This campaign will ensure that the best of the Western Cape is showcased and all those responsible for economic development, at both the provincial and municipal level, have the tools and assets available to promote the Western Cape when engaging with investors,” said David Maynier, Western Cape Minister of Finance and Economic Opportunities.

This year’s campaign will target 16.5 million investors globally through digital technology. “The game changer here for us is using digital. We’ve got relatively small budgets – especially in forex terms – but we need to get in front of investors globally,” said Harris.

He added that the digital strategies aimed to ensure investors saw what was actually going on in the Cape economy, where the investment potential was, and to understand that they should have confidence in South Africa based on their experience and the opportunities in the Cape.

Opportunities being highlighted by the campaign range across a variety of sectors and include agriculture, business process outsourcing, maritime manufacturing, electronics manufacturing, real-estate and technology.

The campaign will run for four months from the end of February. When speaking to Tourism Update Harris said he would definitely recommend similar campaigns to other South African provincial bodies. “The elements are very simple; it’s making sure everybody is saying the same thing, whether you’re from the business or government side,” said Harris.

He added that the campaign was ultimately beneficial to South African Tourism on a national scale. “We might be a provincial and city-focused agency, but in the end we’re promoting South Africa.”