The 2023 edition of Africa’s Travel Indaba kick-started with a high-level dialogue of ministers from the African continent ahead of the official opening of the trade show Minister of Tourism, Patricia De Lille welcomed fellow continental tourism ministers to discuss the opportunities of BRICS for South Africa and the African continent.

This Africa’s premier travel trade show is one of the top three ‘must see’ events on the global calendar. The Indaba displays a variety of Southern Africa’s best tourism products, and is a drawcard for media and travel buyers from across the world.

The issuing of visas was also the topic of the day, to ensure that the regulations must be loosened in order to allow more visitors into Africa with less restrictions, as well as to involve key government departments into facilitating collaborative efforts to ensure that the tourism sector thrive.

During the continental tourism ministers’ dialogue, the agreement was that the continental countries needed to compliment each other rather than competing against each other.

“If sustainable Economic Growth is the pap, fufu, sadza, sima, or ogi – then Tourism is the “magic sauce” that makes it work. The multiplier for success. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) predicted the region’s international tourist arrivals would reach 134 million by 2030, up from 70 million in 2019.”, said Minister of Tourism Patricia de Lille during the Tourism Dialogue session.

It is reported that the UNWTO January 2023 report painted a positive picture on Africa’s recovery of about 65% of its pre-pandemic visitors, and tourism in Africa contributed US$ 1.6 trillion in 2022, and this dialogue made an emphasis on getting back to pre-pandemic levels of the sector performance.

One of the four set priorities of the Department of Tourism is the rolling out of visas and making sure that to exempt people from getting visas much more border than the current statistics; 20 more countries have been added to the e-visa system to ensure smooth travelling between countries. The Department of Tourism is also working on changing the turn around time for countries to get their e-visas earlier and faster than before.

Second priority which is increasingly affecting job creation, especially black economic empowerment, is the entry into the tourism sector to become tourist operators which requires a license. There used to be 1114 applications as a backlog which was cleared in September 2022.

“The backlog number has since changed, however, only 514 tour operators came to collect their licenses, so there are a lot of licenses sitting there. Currently, the backlog is 418 and the cycle remains in the bureaucracy of note and it is now stuck in the Department of Transport in terms of the Land Transport Act, as they are the ones supposed to issue these tour operator licenses.” Minister De Lille said.

The third priority is the revamping of tourism sites across the South African provinces. An example is the graveside of the late Steven Bantu Biko and Sarah Bartman.

“It is not safe nor conducive for our tourists to go to these heritage sites and so I must now go and check all the tourism infrastructure and make sure that they are improved, also for the sake of creating jobs at most. If we can just start with maintenance.”, concluded Minister de Lille.

Africa’s Travel Indaba takes place from 9-11 May 2023, at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal.