Just as there are several opportunities to grow intra-Africa travel and collaborate with neighbouring countries to encourage cross-border travel for inbound tourists, there are also opportunities for cross-border investment in tourism and associated activities.

“We need to get to a point where we are comfortable scaling up our investments to other countries,” said Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa, CEO of the Tourism Business Council of South Africa.

Speaking at the Tourism Investment Forum Africa, held in the Northern Cape last month, Tshivhengwa highlighted that licensing regulations and “rules of trade” needed to be harmonised.

He emphasised the untapped tourism potential of southern and East Africa, noting that so many unexplored tourism areas could be boosted by investment.

Barriers such as airlift capacity and visa requirements needed to be urgently addressed, said Tshivhengwa. “When people travel more – for both business and leisure – investment starts to move.”

Hospitality and Tourism Association of Botswana CEO, Lily Rakorong agreed, pointing out that these barriers must be collectively addressed at a regional bloc level.

“And then these regional economic blocs need to collaborate to ensure this is addressed at a continental level,” she said.

“We, as countries and tourism stakeholders, should enable investors to smoothly move their assets cross-border. We have to ask ourselves, ‘how do we make it easy for a business in Kenya, for example, to connect with a business in Botswana?’.”

Rakorong further noted massive discrepancies in the ease of doing business in African countries. “We also all have to look in-house for the type of investment reforms needed to promote the ease of doing business in our own countries and then share those lessons learned with each other.”