Tourism in Africa: opportunities and challenges - perspectives from Eastern and Southern Africa

Abstract

Tourism in Africa after the pandemic is showing recovery and has even reached the pre-pandemic levels as declared by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in 2024. According to UNWTO’s 2024 outlook, at least 67% of tourism professionals as experts project better prospects for tourism performance compared to 2023. Due to the projected prospects, this perspective paper aims to explore tourism in Africa particularly Eastern and Southern Africa with a focus on opportunities but also challenges. Specifically, this paper poses two questions; what are the opportunities within the African tourism sector that can spur innovation and societal development? and what are the challenges the African tourism sector has that inhibits it from uncovering its full potentials? This paper uses an integrative literature review as the research method and applies thematic analysis. The findings have shown that among the opportunities for tourism in Africa are harnessing the digital market, integration of technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) and metaverse whilst for challenges, the emerged core themes include infrastructure, technology acceptance, research methodology modules, unprofessional customer care personnel and cross-border trade. Therefore, tourism in Africa has opportunities including technology usage whilst among the challenges are infrastructure and technology acceptance. The implications are provided as well as directions for future studies.