African continent urged to develop tourism sector

Elham Mahmoud Ahmed Ibrahim, African Union commissioner for transport and infrastructure, has urged countries in Africa to unite and aim for growing the continent's tourism industry

According to the commissioner's opinion, countries in Africa will never develop tourism if they don't stand together and raise their technological, hospitality and marketing standards. Speaking at the 2016 tourism convention at Victoria Falls, Elham Ibrahim declared:

“We can complement each other as African countries. We should work together to develop our institutional capacity and human resources to take it on the international level. So this is one of the areas we need to work on.

“We need co-operation within African countries. We should all have same policies, same regulations to be able to work together and that is the area the African Union is working on. We have already started harmonising some of our policies.”

Experts say that Africa has huge resources and capacity. Nevertheless, the continent's success in the sector depends on infrastructure development, marketing innovations and opening of new niche sectors.

Regarding Zimbabwe, Ibrahim stated that despite its potential, under current conditions, the country fails in having a thriving tourism sector.

“For example, we have Victoria Falls. I don’t know why it is not doing as we are expecting. We need to work with others, it’s not enough just to attract people to come to Zimbabwe. But why not Zimbabwe and Zambia or Zimbabwe and Egypt joining hands? This I think will have a good pool for the development of the tourism sector in Zimbabwe,” she added.