Where is Tourism headed in Africa? A Study of 206 SMEs in Egypt, Kenya and South Africa
On behalf of the Tourism Recovery Program, Prof. Dr. Harald Zeiss, Director of the Institute for Sustainable Tourism (Inatour) and Jara-Lea Mallwitz, Masters student at the Harz University of Applied Sciences, analyze the obstacles that face small and medium-sized tourism companies in Africa.
The study is based on the analysis of expert interviews and an online survey on 206 businesses from the Tourism Recovery Program, conducted from November 2021 to February 2022. All businesses involved in the study have social and/or environmental innovation potential, and were deeply impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The study seeks to answer the question: How do the framework conditions in the three African countries: South Africa, Egypt and Kenya affect the development of tourism companies?
Featured in the research are 6 case studies that dive deeper into the work of small tourism businesses. The case studies focus on the measures they are taking towards sustainable tourism, the impact of their work on their communities, and how the COVID-19 pandemic affected their operations.
The research identified five key highlights across the three countries:
- Women entrepreneurs in tourism are particularly ambitious and courageous
- Local communities benefit significantly from small tourism businesses
- International tourism is a key driver for sustainability
- SMEs consider sustainability as an important economic factor
- SMEs largely rely on non-governmental funding
The Tourism Recovery Program is the third standalone program of the Empowering Entrepreneurship Initiative and is implemented by enpact and TUI Care Foundation in cooperation with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The aim of the Tourism Recovery Program is to support the resilience and recovery of businesses in the tourism sector.
