EDITORIAL
The need to grow Brand Africa
Published: 22-NOV-04
It’s something of an anomaly that millions of Europeans
and Americans have discovered what most Africans have
yet to learn: that our continent is a tourism mecca in the
raw.
Our governments and tourism authorities must take some
of the blame for this heinous state of affairs. They spend 90%
of their budgets attracting 10% of the tourists, while literally
rubbing shoulders with a vast untapped market of travelers just
waiting to discover their own countries and continents.
They allow voracious multinationals and local conglomerates
to seize control of our natural assets, effectively locking the
locals out of their own backyard through predatory pricing.
In Senegal and Gambia, for instance, French companies
dominate the tourist industry, with precious little benefit for the
residents of these countries. Likewise, Mombasa is said by locals
to be owned by Israel, and its tourist facilities are aimed almost
exclusively at affluent overseas
visitors.
It wouldn’t be so bad if this practice spawned a thriving local
economy, creating jobs and investment in the process. Sadly,
practically every shekel and penny spent goes back to Europe.
Even the top jobs in the hotels and resorts are reserved for expatriates,
with very little in the way of meaningful skills transfer.
You’ll see this pattern repeated across Africa, with a few notable
exceptions.
Our tourism riches, which can almost single-handedly drive
Africa’s economic revival, are being pillaged from under our
very noses, with the approval of the people we look to for leadership.
It’s colonialism at its worst, but nobody says a word.
All is not lost, though. There is currently huge interest in the
potential of tourism to act as a catalyst for economic development
in Africa, not least in relation to Nepad. In terms of Nepad,
there is a significant focus on how partnerships can be used
to maximise the returns from tourism in African
countries.
Tourism forms a key part of two Nepad initiatives: the environment
initiative and the market access initiative. Through
Cross-border Conservation Areas, it is hoped that tourism
partnerships can be promoted, with the aims of conserving the
continent’s natural heritage and creating jobs.
The market access initiative gives more detailed attention
to tourism, with a view to promoting interregional economic
integration; developing a regional marketing strategy; and forging
“co-operative partnerships to capture the benefits of shared
knowledge”. The focus is on sustainable tourism at the community
level, as well as adventure tourism, eco-tourism and cultural
tourism.
This means we need to open our eyes to the significant benefits
of intra-African trade for the continent. We need to start
rolling out the red carpet for our African brothers and sisters
with the same alacrity we reserve for our Western cousins. We
need to examine why tourists continue
to flock to Zimbabwe, in
spite of its turmoil, but shun Nigeria.
We need to find genuine solutions to ending the conflict in
the Great Lakes Region, which boasts some of the world’s most
spectacular tourist sites, but is ravaged by war and instability.
Don’t hold your breath for a speedy resolution, though. Just as
in the tourist and travel industry, there are far too many vested
interests and monumental egos at play here, and far too few
continental bodies willing to get up and make a stand. And so
the pillage continues.
What will it take for our governments to realise that if we,
as a continent, are going to start attracting the kind of tourist
revenues we deserve, we need to create a far greater awareness
of how to grow Africa’s tourist brands?
We certainly won’t build Brand Africa through another set of
glossy publications featuring the Victoria Falls, or the pristine
waters of Zanzibar, or even the Pyramids of the Cheops. What
needs to happen
is for our governments to put tourism at the
very heart of their growth policies, and then to build a meaningful
structure and strategy around that.
This includes a rethink of who really spends money in our
countries, and ideas of how to make it so attractive that they’ll
come again and again. It also means finding ways of drawing
communities into the tourism matrix, so some of the growth and
investment rubs off on them in meaningful ways.
And once we’ve done all that, we need to keep working
tirelessly to cherish our fledgling brands. In the long run,
they will be more valuable to us than any amount of oil or diamonds.
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