Sierra Leone’s Tourism Minister, Hon. Nabeela F. Tunis, on Friday, October 4, 2024, joined 27 Ministers of Tourism (14 from Africa and 15 from the Americas) to adopt the “Punta Cana Declaration” at the 1st UN Tourism Africa and the Americas Summit (CAM-CAF) in the touristic city of Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.
The Punta Cana Declaration, according to Hon. Tunis, resonates with the country’s Medium-Term National Development Plan 2024-2030, as well as His Excellency, Brig. (Rtd) Julius Maada Bio’s vision and positioning of the tourism sector in his development agenda.
The covenants in the Declaration encouraged Hon. Tunis to publicly propose to the UN Tourism Sierra Leone’s willingness to host the 2026 UN Tourism Africa and the Americas Summit.
In the true spirit of the Punta Declaration, the Minister of Tourism and Cultural Affairs engaged the host minister, H.E. David Collado, to sign a cultural agreement that will remove the bottlenecks in promoting tourism and adopt supportive policies that create the enabling environment for sustainable tourism investment. Investment in connectivity between the two countries, hospitality, capacity building, and beach management were some of the issues discussed and should form part of the bilateral agreement.
Sierra Leone will host the 1st UN Women in Tourism Regional Congress and the Women in Tourism Leadership Africa Committee (WiTLAC) in Freetown on 29th to 31st October, 2024.
The Regional Congress aims at equipping women in tourism with the requisite access to financial resources, training, technological innovation, and mentorship to enable them to ascend to leadership positions. WiTLAC, under the chairmanship of Hon. Tunis, will convene on the margins of the Regional Congress to discuss and redefine its objectives.
Bringing the two continents together that share common values, history, culture, food, and religion under one roof to adopt a common agenda by UN Tourism has created the space for Africa to harness its full potential in the tourism ecosystem. According to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Tourism and Cultural Affairs, Kwame Yankson, the Ministry has repositioned itself to align its ongoing transformative agenda and the Tourism for All Campaign within the framework of the Punta Cana Declaration.
“Our Minister has already laid the foundation by introducing the Tourism For All Campaign; what we needed was the international network and branding that will make our destination attractive’, Yankson explained.
The Punta Cana Declaration seeks to promote South-South Cooperation with the aim of advancing sustainable development between Africa and the Americas and to achieve the goals of the 2030 Agenda. It also seeks to achieve the following:
- Promoting strategic investment in the tourism sector
- Improving training and skill development in tourism
- Enhancing exchange between the two regions through the creation of multi-destination tourism products between the Americas and Africa
The Ministers agreed to support actions such as market studies and destination analysis to identify possibilities and resources to enable the formulation of multi-destination routes between regions.
Both continents promised to engage in strategic investments in tourism infrastructure and its enablers, such as education, innovation, and the creative industry.
The Minister was accompanied by the Permanent Secretary, Edward Kwame Yankson.
