The Com­mon Mar­ket for East­ern & South­ern Africa (COMESA) launched The COMESA Tour­ism & Wild­life Her­it­age Hand­book; Single Mar­ket – Count­less des­tin­a­tions at the 41st World Tour­ism Con­fer­ence held in Kigali, Rwanda.

The hand­book is part of the COMESA Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Devel­op­ment Stra­tegic Frame­work, which has been recog­nised by mem­ber states as a mod­el to devel­op nation­al tour­ism action plans to boost com­pet­it­ive­ness. Accord­ing to COMESA, the ini­ti­at­ive will advoc­ate for respons­ible busi­ness prac­tices and envir­on­ment­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity.

Col­lect­ively the 19 COMESA mem­ber nations offer “a diversity of flora and fauna, cul­ture, spe­cies of anim­als and birds, his­tor­ic­al sites and unfor­get­table exper­i­ences”. Accord­ing to COMESA, the new 62-page pub­lic­a­tion is expec­ted to help boost tour­ism to the region, raise aware­ness of the unique region­al offer­ings, and encour­age COMESA mem­ber states to “devel­op stronger link­ages through pub­lic-private and private-private solu­tions on attract­ing more tour­ists”.

COMESA Busi­ness Coun­cil (CBC) Chair­per­son Dr Amany Asfour said: “This tour­ism hand­book is a tool to mar­ket the region as a single des­tin­a­tion that offers sights and sounds that are of qual­ity, afford­able and also inform­at­ive of our cul­tures and his­tor­ies of Africa.

“It is about cul­tur­al diversity, [the] rich­ness of our her­it­age, our tour­ist attrac­tions, infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment and invest­ment. It cov­ers the Indi­an Ocean islands and coun­tries on the main­land. [And] it is about our intra-cul­tur­al integ­ra­tion.”

She added that tour­ism is an inclus­ive busi­ness that affects all sec­tors of soci­ety; that men, women and youths will not be left out as Africa and COMESA work at grow­ing loc­al tour­ism.

The CBC Chair urged COMESA gov­ern­ments to pay close con­sid­er­a­tion to loc­al tour­ism by com­ing up with afford­able products that will increase inbound tour­ism in the region.

What is COMESA?

The Com­mon Mar­ket for East­ern & South­ern Africa (COMESA) region rep­res­ents 42.6% of Africa’s pop­u­la­tion, 36.5% of its sur­face area, and 27.2% of Africa’s GDP. Aver­age GDP growth rate has been 4.89% for the past five years. In 2016, COMESA attrac­ted invest­ment of around $19.6million.

COMESA’s vis­ion is to “be a fully integ­rated, inter­na­tion­ally com­pet­it­ive region­al eco­nom­ic com­munity with high stand­ards of liv­ing for all its people ready to merge into an Afric­an Eco­nom­ic Com­munity”.

Its mis­sion is to “endeav­our to achieve sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic and social pro­gress in all Mem­ber States through increased co-oper­a­tion and integ­ra­tion in all fields of devel­op­ment par­tic­u­larly in trade, cus­toms and mon­et­ary affairs, trans­port, com­mu­nic­a­tion and inform­a­tion, tech­no­logy, industry and energy, gender, agri­cul­ture, envir­on­ment and nat­ur­al resources”.

COMESA Secretariat’s mis­sion state­ment is: “To provide excel­lent tech­nic­al ser­vices to COMESA in order to facil­it­ate the region’s sus­tained devel­op­ment through eco­nom­ic integ­ra­tion”.

COMESA member states

Repub­lic of Bur­undi

Uni­on of the Comoros

Demo­crat­ic Repub­lic of the Congo

Repub­lic of Dji­bouti

Arab Repub­lic of Egypt

State of Erit­rea

Fed­er­al Demo­crat­ic Repub­lic of Ethiopia

Repub­lic of Kenya

Libya

Repub­lic of Mad­a­gas­car

Repub­lic of Malawi

Repub­lic of Maur­i­ti­us

Repub­lic of Rwanda

Repub­lic of Seychelles

Repub­lic of The Sudan

King­dom of Swazi­l­and

Repub­lic of Uganda

Repub­lic of Zam­bia

Repub­lic of Zim­b­ab­we