Tourism viable potential for economic growth in Africa – Expert

Tourism viable potential for economic growth in Africa – Expert

A tourism expert, Mr Ikechukwu Uko on Tuesday says tourism is one of the top five events in Africa with viable potential for global economic growth.

Uko, the organiser of Akwaba Travel Market across the world spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ikeja, Lagos State.

“Tourism is not a very difficult business to promote, it is a product; we should be able to promote it globally because it is one of the top five events in Africa.

“Promoting tourism in Africa is not difficult, just that we have not had people to articulate a vision and set a mission,” said Uko.

He suggested the need to set out a strategy that would identity the audience and environment to articulate a vision and a mission.

“We need to set out a strategy to do that by identifying and defining our audience and then arrange our message that we want to pass to this audience.

“That message must be effectively passed to the desired audience and the only way we can pass the message is through a channel.

“We have channels such as the Calabar carnival, the Eyo festival, Osun Osogbo festival, horse ride in Kano and lots more.

“For these unique festivals to be viable, the system should make it comfortable for tourists to acquire visas for people to attend such festivals,” he said.

Uko said that there were successful tourism events in the country that could boost economy as a viable product.

According to him, the country itself needs to have a strategy that is workable but the stakeholders should call in the experts to boost tourism in the country.

Uko said that workable strategy should be put together stakeholders in the sector so that these potential could be effectively achieved.