Vice-President Dr. Bawumia interacting with some participants including Tourism Minister Barbara Oteng-Gyasi
Vice-President
Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has said there is a huge tourism potential to be harnessed
in Africa towards accelerated development.
“We
should promote our local content in all sectors of the regional economy given
the enormous resources that have gone into developing human capital in our
countries,” he said yesterday when he delivered a keynote address at the first “Regional
Congress on Women in Tourism Sector – Focus on Africa” in Accra yesterday.
He tasked
participants at the two-day workshop to explore how they could use tourism to
tackle some of Africa’s common development challenges, including poverty,
illiteracy, diseases, outmoded cultural practices and mismanagement of its natural
resources.
“I
indulge all of you to contribute generously to improve the industry and empower
women in tourism for sustainable development and to improve the living standards
of our people,” he said.
He also
stressed the need for proper deliberations on how to improve on timely collection, analysis
and dissemination of tourism data in order to inform strategic decision-making
for all stakeholders.
He said
that was because “tourism constitutes one of the fastest growing sectors in the
world and that the industry has become a global and highly competitive socioeconomic
and environmental activity in both developed and developing countries. It is a
labour-intensive industry, creating skilled and unskilled jobs in the supply
value chains.”
“The
tourism market has shown strong growth across Africa in recent years. The UN
World Tourism Organization’s 2016 Highlights report found that Africa welcomed
nearly 55.3 million international tourists in 2014 and sub-Saharan Africa
accounted for 63 per cent of the number. In the decade from 2005 to 2016,
tourism in Africa increased by about 51 per cent,” he revealed.
Dr.
Bawumia referred to a recent published data by the World Bank, trends in the
tourism market, which suggested a phenomenal growth in the industry over the
past decade and a half, which also indicated that the most popular reason for
visiting Ghana may be shifting from leisure and recreation to business and
professional purposes, with increasing spending per visitor.
As a
result of that, the Vice-President indicated
that “tourism has a great potential to accelerate
progress across the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Well managed, the
sector could generate quality jobs, reduce poverty and offer incentives for
environmental conservation – a triple-win to help countries transition towards
more inclusive and resilient economies. And tourism ranks as one of the major
source of foreign exchange earnings in many developing countries.”
Present at the activity were the chairperson of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) Regional Commission for Africa, who is also the Minister for Arts and Culture in Zambia and his colleague Ghanaian Minister for Tourism, Arts, Culture and Creative Arts, Barbara Oteng Gyasi; Ronald Chitotela, Secretary General of the UNWTO; Zurab Pololikashvili and the First Lady of Zimbabwe, Auxillia Mnangagwa.
By Charles Takyi-Boadu, Presidential Correspondent
