It is expected that Africa will have an addi¬tional 36 million visitors by 2010 and 57 million visitors by 2020. Tourism is the only service where there is a positive balance of trade flowing from the devel¬oped world to third world countries. Specifical¬ly, tourism's economic activities effectively improves the livelihoods of the people through income generation, employment creation, improved infrastructure, increased standard of living and increased government revenue.
The World Bank points out that even though Africa started from a lower base of investor arrivals, the continent now enjoys the highest growth rates of 7.2 per cent.
As noted, even though Africa is relatively not known to the main generating markets in Europe, that is Spain, Germany, France, Holland, Sweden, Norway, U.S. etc., the UNWTO estimates that 36 million international tourists will visit African by the end of 2010.
According to Christee and Crompton (2001), Africa receives just about four per cent of all inter¬national travelers and tourism receipts. The UNWTO has observed that Africa's tourism poten¬tial lies in its strength in the originality and authen¬ticity of its products.
Over the decade of the 1990s, Africa has experienced a rise in tourist arrivals from 8.4 million to 10.6 million and receipts growth from $2.3 billion to $3.7 billion. According to the World Tourism Organization (WTO, 2006), the tourism industry in Sub-Saharan Africa enjoyed a robust annual market share growth rate of 10 percent in 2006. In spite of this, there are only few empirical studies that investigate the contributions of tourism to economic growth and development for African economies. Using a panel data of 42 African countries for the years that span from 1995 to 2004, this study explores the potential contribution of tourism to economic growth and development within the conventional neoclassical framework. The results show that receipts from tourism industry significantly contribute both to the current level of gross domestic product and the economic growth of Sub-Saharan African countries as do investments in physical and human capital. Our findings imply that African economies could enhance their short-run economic growth by strategically strengthening their tourism industries.
North Africa attracts 35 percent of the conti¬nent's traffic; Southern Africa 35 percent whilst East Africa receives 23 percent West Africa attracts only 10 percent with Central Africa con¬tending with three percent.
In Africa, as elsewhere in the developing world, governments have already accepted not only the importance of tourism but also have played the dominant role in the planning process. This role might be adopted through political preference or necessity, or both. No two countries or sub-regions in Africa are similar in the range and difficulty of problems they face. Many African countries have weak, embryonic tourism sectors, while other countries have vigorous, more developed tourism sectors. In the latter countries, much of the investment, management and development in tourism is from private sector initiatives. But few African countries have given careful consideration to the type of tourism they want, and to what extent their declared aims are realistic, and what needs to be done to achieve those aims.
Against this brief background, it is possible to identify a number of issues relating to the development of tourism in Africa. Addressing the issue areas is important, not least because the issues are crucial ingredients to maximize tourism's contribution to Africa's development. The issues are really of two kinds: those for the tourism industry itself and issues for African governments.
The first of these issues is the need to delineate the relative roles of the private local and foreign tourism partners in development decisions on the continent. In particular, the decisions in the areas of investment, marketing and operation of the tourism enterprises appear to be critical to the tourism industry. The key issue for all concerned is to recognize that the development decisions made by them do have wider economic consequences for Africa. It is therefore imperative that investors recognize the implications of their actions in the overall interest of the long-run economic sustainability of the tourism sector.
The second major challenge is the need to develop human resources, particularly indigenous personnel, both for reasons of delivering quality services for tourists, as well as enhancing general skills of the local workforce. Achieving these broad objectives will potentially encourage sound utilization of local suppliers and thus enhance not only their productivity but also intersectoral linkages. In this sense, the spin-off effects are obvious: foreign exchange will be retained locally and further income would be earned.
Thirdly, there are problems facing the local tourism industries in Africa that are characterized by a large number of small and medium-sized tourism enterprises (SMEs). Although SMEs serve useful functions in tourism (e.g. the development of linkages, providing personal service, etc), but for most of them, life is a daily struggle, with many of them operating at the margin of survival. They also lack the requisite experience to run tourism business along modem management principles. Even the nature of tourism demand renders them uncompetitive as they are unable to capitalize on the advantages that accrue from the economies of scale. The real challenge is for them to develop marketing strategies that would enable them to overcome some of these difficulties and thereby sell their products. Again, their limited resource base makes this objective hard to achieve.
The traditional role of government is to formulate policy for the tourism sector. Today the focus has changed because of changing priorities occasioned by development in the international tourism scene.
The challenge for national governments is to formulate tourism sector policies that best reflect the new thinking. Some important areas needing policy re-orientation or refocusing are consultation with local communities in the planning process; forging partnership with the private sector; liberal immigration regulations to facilitate free tourist movement; tourism infrastructure development policy to facilitate tourism development, for the benefit not just for tourism but the wider society.
The last policy issue needs to be linked to devising viable and sensible options for financing tourism infrastructure. Other aspects of policy re-focusing include entrepreneurial development initiatives, policies to enhance tourist length of Stay. Last but not least, the policy to identify ways in which the benefits from tourism activity can be spread more evenly throughout the society.
The basic strategy for achieving sustainable development through economic growth is now well established. The core components of the strategy include macroeconomic stability and a stable investment environment; integration into the international economy; a reliance on the private sector as the driving force for economic growth; long-term foreign direct investment, especially in support of export-oriented activities; adequate investment in human development areas such as health and education; a fair and reliable legal framework; and the maintenance of basic physical infrastructures. ...Long-term success can be achieved only if African Governments have the political will not just to enact sound economic policies but also to persevere in their implementation until a solid economic foundation has been established.
As tourism is essentially an export, international economic activity, we identify and examine in this section some of those elements of the strategy that are relevant to the long-term sustainable development of tourism in the African region. The following considerations are particularly striking because of their importance in shaping a coordinated African tourism development policy in practice.
First, international tourism has come to stay for the foreseeable future and cannot casually be cast aside or treated less seriously than it deserves. The economic and other benefits and ‘disbenefits’ accruing from its development are well recognized in Africa. Despite the mounting criticisms of the negative effects of tourism development, there is groundswell of evidence that many African countries, encouraged by positive developments elsewhere, continue to pursue its promotion as part of their economic development strategies. Thus tourism has now merited inclusion in national development plans of most African countries.
Second, as tourism develops and becomes intricate it will require strategic management of the process. The objective is to maximize the benefits, contain and mitigate the negative impacts in order to ensure that development conforms to national policy objectives. Additionally, the development of the sector needs to be supported by large inflows of foreign resources (e.g. financial, personnel). Foreign involvement will obviously have wider repercussions for the decision making sovereignty of the host government and thereby threatening the long-term, sustainability of the sector. In other cases, the role of government institutions and technocrats may not help advance the cause of tourism.
This brings us to a third point, namely, that tourism development cannot be separated from other facets of economy, society and politic. Merely creating national, sub regional and regional institutions or planning bodies responsible for tourism is hollow in the absence of the political mandate and adequate resources to do their jobs. Here lies much of the difficulties with developing tourism in Africa-resulting from ineffectual policies. This holds the key to future advances in tourism development in the region.
Fourth, in the same way that politica1 support and adequate resourcing hold the key to Africa's future tourism development, so too is the need to empower the African masses. This can be done in a variety of ways: by creating in them an awareness of the benefits of tourism, by allowing them access to entrepreneurial opportunities offered by tourism, permitting women a role in the industry, and perhaps finally giving them a sense of ownership in the sector. That said, these are proactive measures and ones that negate the spirit of state capitalism, and gender inequality.
African tourism policy strategies should aim to redress these deficiencies. It then means, as noted, that the existence of credible political, commitment on the part of African governments is a sine qua non to the realization of such strategies.
In developing tourism in Africa, the following areas for policy consideration are important, including:
• well conceived and well articulated but realistic tourism policy objectives;
• local involvement and control over tourism development;
• forging private-public sector partnerships for tourism development;
• raising gender awareness to enhance womens’ participation in the tourism sector;
• promoting regional tourism co- operation and integration;
• availability and allocation of appropriate resources (e.g. financial, human, product);
• developing equity in tourism benefits-sharing;
• promoting community tourism awareness campaign;
• availability of appropriate legal framework for tourism;
• building image of a destination through a marketing and promotional campaign;
• expanding tourism entrepreneurial initiatives/investment opportunities
In the final analysis, it should be added that for the tourism sector in Africa to respond to changing realities in the international tourism market scene, the strategic development of the industry is paramount. This requires co-operation from all concerned -the tourism industry, the national governments and indeed, the international community -to make it happen, provided there is political commitment.
Source: WTO
