The economic diversification agenda of Zambia defined in the Seventh National Development Plan places immense importance not only on agriculture and industrialization, but also on tourism.
Tourism remains greatly unexploited regardless of the sector’s possibility to transform the economy of our country and improving the socio-economic status of the underprivileged Zambians.
We feel enthused by the sentiments of visiting United Nations World Tourism Organisation’s secretary-general, Taleb Rifai that Zambia is one of the crucial countries in terms of tourism to the international body.
We suppose the body has recognized the potential of tourism that Zambia sits on, and what can be unlocked.
We are quite thrilled that the secretary-general of UNWTO is in the country mainly to assist the efforts in plan development in the tourism sector.
As rightly observed by Dr Rifai, tourism, if correctly exploited, has potential to alter the growth of the country efforts via job and wealth creation.
“Tourism has become such a powerful transformative force for development. It is about job creation and improving the living standards of the people. That is the reason the UN has declared 2017 the international year of sustainable tourism for development,” Dr Rifai summed it up.
Undoubtedly, tourism is an influential tool which we cannot ignore as a country.
Countries like Mauritius, Seychelles and Egypt, among others, have successfully managed to utilize the transformative power of tourism and the results are quite startling!
That’s the reason Government has been working hard to regulate policies that support the growth and development of the sector.
For example, lately, the Government launched tourism levy which is targeted at funding tourism infrastructure development, among other areas.
