Founder and President of La Campagne Tropicana Beach Resort, Wanle Akinboboye, has called for strategic alliances to enable Africa to present itself as a single, unified tourism destination to the world.
Akinboboye made the call during a meeting with the Association of Nigerian Journalists and Writers of Tourism (ANJET) on Wednesday in Lagos.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the meeting was organised by the association.
During a review of the Ipada Festival initiative, Akinboboye stated that in spite of Africa being the wealthiest continent in the world in terms of natural resources, it continued to be regarded as poor.
NAN reports that Ipada, a Yoruba word for “Return,” was designed to unify the continent and its diaspora through structured tourism programmes and a five-year calendar of events covering Africa’s regions.
According to Akinboboye, the continent’s greatest challenge lies in its inability to act as one.
“The continent of Africa is a father with 55 children and not one of them is actually claiming him.
“It’s always been Nigeria for Nigeria, Togo for Togo, South Africa for South Africa, Kenya for Kenya, and tourism requires a strategic alliance.
“For tourism to thrive, you cannot be a lone ranger,” he said.
Akinboboye, who champions destination development through the La Campagne Tropicana, said Africa’s tourism potential would remain under-utilised unless countries collaborated to transform their attractions into viable destinations that offer full tourist experiences.
“Attractions don’t generate economic trickle-down effects; attractions attract people.
“You must transform those attractions into a destination before people will come and spend their money,” he said.
Citing the example of Europe’s collective approach to tourism, he said there were lessons to learn from the European Union’s Schengen Visa System.
Akinboboye noted that the system allowed seamless movement across member states, and contributed to the Europe recording 747 million visitors in 2024.
“Once you get a Schengen visa, you can visit any part of Europe.
“They are just about 10.1 million square kilometres of area, they have three, maximum four months of good weather but collectively they did 747 million visitors,” he said.
Akinboboye stressed that with the size, resources and diversity of Africa, the continent was not lacking in attractions, and had the capacity to outperform other continents if it collaborated.
To achieve this, Akinboboye proposed the creation of a continental tourism gateway through Nigeria, leveraging the country’s economic and geographical strengths.
He said Lagos State and Abuja would be the entry points to other countries across the continent.
“We chose to use Nigeria. We are approximately 923,677,000; we are over 250 million people.
“We believe that we are in the right position, the biggest economy is $500 billion GDP, we are going for $1 trillion GDP now,” he said.
He explained that the Ipada initiative, with the second edition scheduled to hold from Nov. 28 to Dec. 7, was not only targeted at tourism but also prosperity through unity.
He said it was a collective movement that would reposition Africa as a major player in global tourism and economic development.
Akinboboye explained that the initiative’s five-year calendar plan would give the diaspora the opportunity to plan their visits to any country in the continent, over a space of five years, from the curated activities and events.
“That is when we can take advantage of the almost two billion people of primary, secondary, extended target market we have in the continent, we have in the diaspora,” he said. (NAN)
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