Ja­maica’s Tourism Min­is­ter Ed­mund Bartlett has called for clos­er re­la­tion­ship be­tween Africa and the Caribbean say­ing it would pro­vide “a won­der­ful op­por­tu­ni­ty for a re­verse di­as­po­ra ex­pe­ri­ence”.

Speak­ing at the African Tourism In­vest­ment Sum­mit here, Bartlett said that he be­lieves that “we, from the new world, can give back to Africa based on our ex­per­tise and our in­vest­ment re­sources in build­ing the tourism that the Caribbean has be­come very fa­mous and pro­fi­cient in de­liv­er­ing.

“This is our chance to give back to Africa and tourism can be the ve­hi­cle,” he told the round­table dis­cus­sion ti­tled “De­vel­op­ing a Sus­tain­able Tourism In­dus­try in Africa by In­te­grat­ing Cul­tur­al, En­vi­ron­ment, Good Gov­er­nance and So­cial Con­cerns|.

The dis­cus­sion in­clud­ed pre­sen­ta­tions from gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, fi­nance ex­ec­u­tives and ad­min­is­tra­tors from South Africa, Botswana, Spain and Sier­ra Leone.

The African mar­ket of 1.3 bil­lion peo­ple is be­ing eyed as the next big source mar­ket for tourists to Ja­maica as the in­dus­try seeks to di­ver­si­fy be­yond tra­di­tion­al mar­kets in North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope.

In fur­ther­ance of this ob­jec­tive, ex­plorato­ry talks have been held with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Ethiopi­an Air­lines, Kenya Air­ways, and Rwan­da Air con­cern­ing reg­u­lar air ser­vice be­tween Africa and Ja­maica.

“This will not on­ly open up the African mar­ket to the Caribbean but, al­so, Ja­maica will be­come the gate­way by which per­sons in North Amer­i­ca, Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean may trav­el to the African con­ti­nent,” Bartlett said.

There has al­so been ex­ten­sive co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Ja­maica and Africa in the era of tourism re­silience.

In Feb­ru­ary, Ja­maica host­ed an African Caribbean Tourism Sum­mit as part of the his­toric Glob­al Tourism Re­silience Con­fer­ence in Kingston.

In ad­di­tion, the Glob­al Tourism Re­silience and Cri­sis Man­age­ment Cen­tre (GTR­CMC), which is head­quar­tered in Kingston, is look­ing to ex­pand its satel­lite net­work in Africa. Cur­rent­ly, there is one cen­tre in Africa, which is lo­cat­ed at Keny­at­ta Uni­ver­si­ty in Kenya. How­ev­er, there have been ini­tial talks with Nige­ria and Botswana.

The African Tourism In­vest­ment Sum­mit, which ends on Wednes­day, has at­tract­ed hun­dreds of del­e­gates in­clud­ing gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, in­vestors, pri­vate eq­ui­ty firms, ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists, de­ci­sion mak­ers, in­ter­na­tion­al buy­ers and trav­el pro­fes­sion­als.

The event is part of Africa Trav­el Week.

CMC/ag/ir/2023

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Apr 4, CMC