By Phyllis Wakiaga
Africa does not need another conversation about its tourism potential. The case has already been made repeatedly and convincingly. What the continent needs is a far more serious conversation about why, despite the language of growth, connectivity and AfCFTA, tourism across Africa remains unnecessarily difficult to move, build and scale.
For too long, the diagnosis has been that the central problem is visibility: better branding, stronger destination marketing, more persuasive storytelling. All of that matters. But the issue is not branding alone; it is whether the product, infrastructure and policy environment can consistently deliver on the promise. Africa is not short of attractions, culture, heritage, creativity or hospitality. Neither is it short of market interest.
The deeper challenge is that the continent still makes it difficult to experience tourism as one market. Africa’s tourism economy is trying to grow on top of fragmented systems, a serious constraint at a time when global demand is shifting in its favour.
The 2025 World Travel Market (WTM) Global Travel Report projects travel and tourism growth of 3.5 per cent annually between 2025 and 2035, outpacing projected global GDP growth of 2.5 per cent. It also finds that 56 per cent of travellers are more interested in visiting new destinations than they were two years ago. In 2024, the continent recorded 74 million international arrivals and strong growth in air traffic, outperforming global averages. Africa is therefore not lacking momentum, but its systems are lagging its opportunity.
The constraint then is not demand. It is whether Africa has built the systems to convert that interest into seamless regional tourism. Travellers and investors still face visa friction, costly and indirect routes, fragmented regulation and limited cross-border products. We market Africa as connected but operate it as disconnected. That model is becoming costly.
Global travel choices are increasingly being shaped by expense and overcrowding. This should work in Africa’s favour. The continent can offer distinctive, culturally rich and less saturated experiences at a time when travellers are actively looking beyond the traditional tourism hotspots. But that advantage cannot be fully realised if destinations remain hard to reach, hard to combine and hard to transact across. If AfCFTA is to matter for tourism, then tourism must be treated as more than marketing. It is a trade in services issue, a mobility issue, a transport issue, a standards issue and a digital market-access issue.
Start with movement. Too many immigration systems still behave more like gatekeepers than facilitators of tourism and services trade. That logic is increasingly out of place in a continent that seeks deeper services integration, stronger regional circuits and more intra-African commerce.
Then there is aviation. If visas are one side of the integration challenge, air connectivity is the other. Africa cannot credibly speak of a single tourism market while intra-African travel remains among the most expensive, inconvenient and indirect in the world. This is precisely why the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) matters. Conceived as an African Union flagship under Agenda 2063, SAATM is intended to liberalise African skies and create a unified air transport market. It is therefore far more than an aviation reform; it is a tourism competitiveness reform which will lead to easier, cheaper and more direct air access.
The digital market presents another challenge. Nearly 80 per cent of travellers used digital platforms when planning and booking their last international trip, while around 90 per cent say social media and virtual assistants influence their itineraries. This should force a deeper conversation in Africa, not only about visibility, but about control. Who owns distribution? Who owns the customer relationship? Who captures the data? And how long can African tourism businesses rely disproportionately on external platforms to sell African experiences back to the world?
Integration must also work for smaller players. A tourism economy cannot become transformative if only large firms can navigate its complexity. SMEs cannot scale across borders when licensing is unpredictable, standards are uneven, payment systems are clumsy and market intelligence is weak. Communities cannot benefit meaningfully if they sit near tourism, but outside its value chains. Skills transfer, technology transfer and local enterprise participation matter just as much as investment headlines. Basic CSR is not structural inclusion.
There is also a confidence dimension beneath the policy challenge. Africa still too often underestimates Africans as travellers. The premium travel imagination remains outward-looking, as though the most desirable experiences lie elsewhere. Yet the continent’s advantages are clear: heritage, landscapes, culture, creativity and differentiated destinations. Building a single tourism market means taking intra-African demand seriously making it easier, more affordable and more attractive for Africans to travel, spend and experience Africa.
After attending WTM Africa 2026, the question for me is whether Africa is ready to build the machinery that turns its tourism advantages into a seamless, competitive and inclusive market. The continent’s tourism future will be won not by visibility alone, but by integration of policy, infrastructure, standards, investment and experience. AfCFTA has opened the door. Africa must now build the systems to walk through it.
The writer is an Eisenhower Fellow and Managing Partner at Wakiaga and Company Advocates, with expertise in public policy, international trade, investment, private sector development and governance.
