South Africa’s President, Cyril Ramaphosa, addressed the tourism fraternity on the closing day of Africa’s Travel Indaba, which ended on Saturday, May 4.

Ramaphosa thanked participants and visitors for coming to the continent, and to KwaZulu Natal’s Durban – the host city of Indaba – and highlighted some of the many offerings that South Africa and the African continent had to offer visitors: mountains, beaches, world-class national parks, and “135 World Heritage Sites, from Aksum in Ethiopia, to the city of Timbuktu in Mali, to Great Zimbabwe”.

“We tend to think of tourism as being associated with pleasure motives such as visiting iconic sites and getting involved in recreational activities, but it can also embrace business, education, health or religion as a basis for travelling,” said Ramaphosa. “Tourism, as your host – Minister [Derek] Hanekom – aptly put it during his opening address, is the New Gold. It is a sector that is thriving and that has tremendous potential for further growth and for the creation of jobs.”

The President said African countries were taking the lead in sustainable tourism and eco-tourism, within the growing global trend of the pursuit of sustainable development, and growing economies while minimising the impact on nature.

Rise of small businesses

“Most importantly, tourism holds great promise for the development of small businesses in our countries,” said Ramaphosa. “It is when you stay in small bed and breakfast establishments or small hotels, that you get to interact with the locals, listen to their stories about the area, and get advice on the best, least-known places to go on sightseeing trips.

Up against the competition

Ramaphosa noted the highly competitive tourism environment in which Africa is playing, trying to earn its share of the tourism pie “where [travellers] are spoiled for choice when it comes to where they choose to take themselves and their families, and spend their money”.

He identified ten issues that the continent needs to address:

1. Reduce the onerous and often unnecessary bureaucratic red tape that tourists who want to visit SA have to face. “This requires of us to streamline our tourist visa regimes. We are in the process of radically overhauling our visa dispensation for the rest of the world, and introducing a world-class e-visa system.”
2. Dealing with crime, and countering the perception that Africa is an unsafe tourism destination. “This means we have to devote more resources to tackling acts of criminality, particularly crimes against tourists. Initiatives like the Kenya Tourism Federation Safety and Communication Centre, the Tourism Police in Uganda, and our own tourism safety monitors in South Africa are examples of measures that can be undertaken.”
3. Promoting domestic tourism to encourage African citizens to travel and see their own countries.
4. “As governments, we need to actively seek out private-sector partners for the establishment of new tourism products and offerings. To do this, we must forge stronger public-private partnerships.”
5. Tourism needs to be seen as each country’s combined national effort, where inter-governmental co-operation between different departments and agencies is enhanced.
6. “Modern tourism requires organisational systems and the provision of a supporting infrastructure of facilities and personnel able to run the tourism business. This means that we should develop and upgrade our energy generation, clean water reticulation, roads, bridges, hotels, hospitals, telecommunication, our game parks and many other facilities.”
7. Empowerment of the youth and women, by opening pathways to effective participation in the tourism industry as owners and managers of various offerings and businesses.
8. Find a unity in the aspiration to build and brand Africa as a continent of success and a continent that will “shine as a tourist destination for the world and for our own people”.
9. Embrace technology in the era of the fourth industrial revolution. “Artificial intelligence, blockchain, and the Internet of things require that our tourism offerings must be well aligned with enveloping technologies. In a few years to come, a tourist will land at our airports and have a self-driven car taking them to pre-programmed tourist destinations.”
10. Be open to international benchmarks that should be used to improve standards, competitiveness and the quality of the domestic tourism industry.

Ramaphosa concluded by saying that Africa is a continent that is open and welcoming, and shares a common goal – to offer a unique, one-of-a-kind and unforgettable consumer and business travel experience. “Let’s go and build a brave new world that will attract the world to come back home to Africa.”