It is said that every year about 1 billion people travel across borders around the world. With the development of transportation, people can visit various places, and the tourism industry plays an important role in the global economy, accounting for 5% of the world’s GDP. Against this backdrop, Africa’s tourism industry has achieved remarkable growth in recent years, and its nature is gradually changing. In fact, Africa’s tourism industry is the world’s second fastest-growing after the Asia-Pacific region. Not only has intra-continental travel increased, but in 2018 67 million visitors from outside the continent visited Africa—an increase of about 1.8 times compared to 2005, 13 years earlier. However, there are issues that hinder the further growth of African tourism. This article takes a closer look at the reasons for the rapid growth and changes in African tourism, as well as the challenges that lie beneath.

Savanna safari tour (Photo: Alex Berger/Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0])

Tourism in Africa

First, let’s introduce some aspects of tourism in Africa. African tourist destinations are diverse, including vast nature, historical heritage, and cultural attractions, and their character varies greatly from country to country. There are 142 World Heritage sites, with South Africa having the largest number.

As for nature-focused destinations, Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro National Park and Victoria Falls on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe are world-famous attractions. In Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve and South Africa’s Kruger National Park, safari tours on the savanna are offered, allowing visitors to see wild animals such as lions and giraffes up close. Outside the savanna, you can see wild gorillas in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park and Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. Many people visit Seychelles and Mauritius for resort purposes, and the beautiful sea is one of the attractions. Not only that, the Sahara Desert stretches across the northern part of the continent, and the Namib Desert lies in Namibia, offering various perspectives—forests, seas, deserts, flora, and fauna.

For historical and cultural destinations, emblematic examples include Egypt’s pyramids and the ruins of Carthage in Tunisia, both with long histories dating back to before the Common Era. Other attractive destinations include Stone Town in Zanzibar, with its beautiful stone-built streets, and the stone ruins of Great Zimbabwe. Gorée Island in Senegal, once a hub for the slave trade, is registered as a negative World Heritage Site, and South Africa has the Apartheid Museum, allowing visitors to learn more directly about slavery and apartheid (※1), both indispensable in telling the history of Africa. Meanwhile, South Africa is also a major wine-producing region, and wine tours are offered to enjoy wines while visiting wineries. In this way, there are many ways to enjoy Africa, from learning about history and culture to enjoying food.

Reasons for the growth of African tourism

Why has tourism in Africa grown so rapidly in recent years? The reasons lie mainly in proactive policy changes and investment in the tourism industry. For example, on the policy side, improvements in flight connections at Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, can be cited. Thanks to an airport expansion project that began in 1999, new terminals and runways were built and more parking stands were added, enabling the airport to accommodate more aircraft. As a result, it has grown into a hub for Africa that surpasses Dubai Airport—one of the world’s leading hubs—and Bole now serves as a gateway to other regions of Africa.

Ethiopian Airlines aircraft (Photo: Alan Wilson/Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0])

In 2004, the African Union (AU) adopted the Tourism Action Plan to further develop tourism for economic revitalization and job creation across Africa, promoting investment in infrastructure and strengthening tourism marketing. For example, the Kenyan government invested about 1.1 billion US dollars to expand the highway connecting Malindi, Mombasa, and Lunga Lunga to ease chronic traffic congestion. In addition, the Regional Tourism Organization of Southern Africa (RETOSA) aims to revitalize multi-country tourism in Southern Africa and is actively conducting tourism marketing, such as surveying visitor satisfaction at airports in South Africa. In this way, efforts have been made to increase the number of tourists by focusing on infrastructure development and marketing.

In addition to policies that simply increase the number of tourists, there are also initiatives to encourage people visiting Africa for business to extend their stay for leisure. Since the 2000s, Africa has experienced economic growth, and business visitors have increased in tandem. Successfully incorporating this increase in business visitors into tourism has contributed to the growth of Africa’s tourism industry. For example, the KwaZulu-Natal Tourism Authority in South Africa exhibited at World Travel Market Africa (WTM Africa) held in Cape Town and proposed a plan to promote “Bleisure,” combining business and leisure in a single trip. This led to a partnership with the Africa Tourism Investment Summit, encouraging travel that includes not only business but also sightseeing.

African tourism panel discussion by representatives of various countries (Photo: Ministry of Environment – Rwanda/Flickr [CC BY-ND 2.0])

The flip side of growth

Despite the rapid growth of African tourism, there are many factors that hinder further development. A number of issues lurk particularly in the area of “transportation.” Inconvenient transportation can cause people to give up on visiting. In air travel in particular, although 16.8% of the world’s population lives in Africa, its share of the global air transport market remains at 2–4% only.

Within air travel, there are various challenges in terms of flight convenience. While Ethiopia’s Bole Airport has certainly grown as a hub, the number of direct flights from countries outside the continent is still limited. Even at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in the United States, which boasts the world’s highest passenger traffic, there are direct flights to only five countries in Africa. Intra-African flights are also inconvenient in some respects. Establishing direct flights between countries within the continent requires the consent of both governments and overcoming various legal barriers. In reality, as some countries impose various regulations on foreign airlines to protect their national carriers, it can be difficult to establish direct flights. As a result, even intra-continental travel may require transiting via Europe or the Middle East. In addition, some countries impose taxes on jet fuel more than twice the world average, making airfares in Africa relatively expensive; routing through Europe or the Middle East makes them even more costly. Moreover, there are few large airports and facilities for aircraft maintenance on the continent, and infrastructure remains insufficient in many respects.

Low-cost carriers (LCCs) (※4) are also not yet widespread in Africa. There are only 12 LCCs, and their routes are limited. They mainly operate domestic routes, and even international routes are mostly within the continent. Only Morocco’s LCC “Jet4You” has routes to Europe. For travelers who choose flights based on price, the lack of LCCs is a disadvantage.

Mwanza Airport, Tanzania (Photo: Stefano C. Manservisi/Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0])

Furthermore, many African countries require visas for entry. Comprehensive agreements guaranteeing freedom of movement are few, and if you plan to visit several countries, you may need to obtain a visa for each one. Even holders of passports from African countries need visas to visit, on average, 80% of other African countries. Another issue is that visas are expensive. In Cameroon and Guinea, the application fee alone can cost the equivalent of over 10,000 yen. Using an agency makes it even more expensive due to service fees. To further invigorate Africa’s tourism industry, stimulating intra-African mobility would be an effective measure, but this is difficult in Africa, where many countries are low-income.

And the problems with transportation in Africa are not limited to air travel. Overland travel is also physically limited when it comes to covering the continent’s vast landmass. For economic reasons, high-speed rail is not very developed, and even when traveling by car or bus, there are many inconveniences, such as poorly maintained roads and lengthy border-crossing procedures, which are common. Border crossings can involve long waits for inspections, and in some cases, officials may demand bribes.

Doors being opened

However, reforms are being pursued to address many of these issues, particularly in air travel. In the early 2000s, South Africa and Kenya agreed to liberalize air services. As a result, traffic between the two countries increased by 69%. In January 2014, a joint visa was introduced for Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) also adopted the “ECOWAS Passport,” which allows free movement among its 15 member countries. These common visas eliminate the need to obtain visas for each country, reducing cost and effort.

Passports of African countries (Photo: BBC World Service/Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0])

In January 2018, the African Union (AU) launched the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) with the goal of integrating Africa’s economy and tourism. Specifically, it promotes liberalization in aviation, including strengthening connectivity among African countries, lowering airfares, and increasing scheduled flights. Accompanying this are economic reforms such as increasing employment and abolishing tariffs stipulated within the African Union (AU) to improve intra-African trade. Currently, of the 55 AU member countries and regions, 27 participate in the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM).

Furthermore, efforts are being made to ensure “environmentally conscious travel.” In recent years, the idea of “flight shame” has been spreading, reflecting concern for environmentally friendly travel and the impact of aviation on climate change. Based on this idea, some travelers prefer rail, which emits far less CO2 than flying, and hesitate to take long-haul flights to distant Africa. To protect both tourism and the environment, South Africa is working to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from airplanes. Specifically, it has introduced the Airport Carbon Accreditation (ACA) program and is working to manage and reduce CO2 emissions. In 2018, 347,026 tons of CO2 were reduced.

In this way, a series of reforms, particularly related to transportation, are being implemented to further boost Africa’s tourism industry.

Further issues

While transportation issues are being addressed and improved, there are other issues in African tourism that cannot be overlooked—mainly those related to the relationship between tourism and “people,” and the balance with business. In reality, “poverty” and “children” are being used as objects of tourism in Africa. For example, tours of low-income residential areas—the so-called “slum tours”—are one such case. Kibera in Nairobi, said to be the largest low-income settlement in Africa, can be easily visited by joining a tour. Conducted as study tours, they aim to encourage participants to directly see and feel the realities on the ground, guided by people familiar with the area. Some tours even include interactions with residents. The problem is that instead of understanding the realities and using the experience to help improve the lives of those who live there or to alleviate poverty, the tours can simply turn poverty into a spectacle.

Kibera (Photo: GRID Arendal/Flickr [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0])

In addition, orphanage tourism and volunteering at schools can lead to the exploitation of children. While these activities may contribute to understanding local children and donations or volunteering may help improve their lives, they can also create misunderstandings about the underlying causes of poverty and become counterproductive when people “believe they are helping” without understanding the realities. Moreover, institutional orphanage care itself is not a particularly desirable form of care, and linking it to tourism can turn orphanages into part of a business; donations from tourists may end up helping to maintain and promote this business.

Economic disparities between tourists and local people can also cause problems. Locals suffering from poverty may force children to work to sell souvenirs as a means of daily subsistence, or engage in prostitution transactions with tourists. This is the result of supply and demand aligning with moneyed tourists.

Thus, beyond “transportation,” issues such as exploitation and power imbalances still lurk within African tourism.

Toward future development

In recent years, African tourism has experienced rapid growth, with various reforms, especially in transportation. This has made freer movement increasingly possible, but many inconveniences and areas for improvement remain. And the issues are not limited to “transportation.” The problems of African tourism extend to issues concerning the “people” who live there. In particular, the problems of poverty and the exploitation of children are not easily solved through institutional reforms; they need to be considered from multiple perspectives and will take time to resolve. There are aspects of African tourism that need to be reconsidered, even as its growth attracts attention.

Roads in South Africa (Photo: South African Tourism/Flickr [CC BY 2.0])

※1 Apartheid: A policy of racial discrimination implemented in South Africa in the 20th century. Whites and non-whites were governed separately.

※2 Hub airport: An airport that serves as a regional base where air routes from various places converge and passengers or cargo are relayed to other airports.

※3 World Travel Market (WTM): A trade fair for business professionals in the travel and tourism industries.

※4 LCC: Abbreviation for Low Cost Carrier. Airlines that provide air services at low fares through efficient operations.

Writer: Wakana Kishimoto

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