- Title: Africa needs fairness and vaccines to revive its tourism sector - minister
- Date: 16th July 2021
- Summary: NAIROBI, KENYA (FILE - FEBRUARY 12, 2014) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF TOURISTS WATCHING AND TAKING PICTURES OF ELEPHANT CALVES AS THEY FEED AT THE DAPHNE SHELDRICK TRUST IN NAIROBI NATIONAL PARK
- Embargoed: 30th July 2021 16:07
- Keywords: African tourism COVID-19 impact on tourism sector hospitality industry tourism revenue vaccines
- Location: NAIROBI AND MAASAI MARA, KENYA/EASTERN CAPE, SOUTH AFRICA
- City: NAIROBI AND MAASAI MARA, KENYA/EASTERN CAPE, SOUTH AFRICA
- Country: Kenya
- Topics: Africa,Environment
- Reuters ID: LVA005EM3C8D3
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: African countries need to get equal access to COVID-19 vaccines so they can start rebuilding their devastated tourism industries, Kenya's tourism minister said on Friday (July 16).
About 21 million jobs have been lost in the sector across the continent since the start of the pandemic, Najib Balala said on the sidelines of a meeting of his African counterparts, called by the United Nations to discuss the crisis.
"The number of people who lost their jobs directly in tourism is 21 million in Africa. In Kenya here, we have about 1.5 million. So, you can see how devastating it is in Kenya. But in other countries it is not devastating because they have not opened and taken the opportunity and the potential tourism has in their countries," he said, adding that vaccination of hospitality workers is vital to the tourism sector's survival.
Africa has essentially had to pause its rollout of COVID-19 vaccines because of supply problems - and only 18 million people are fully vaccinated in a continent of 1.3 billion, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday (July 15).
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has repeatedly decried what he calls the scandalous difference in vaccine supplies between richer and poorer nations.
Balala said some rich nations had been hoarding shots, stockpiling enough doses for up to four times their populations, at the expense of African nations.
"We need fairness. The western world should stop hoarding. Countries order vaccines four times their requirements, and we in Africa who don't have even 10 percent of our requirements are denied accessibility and that is the unfairness we are talking about," he said.
The collapse of the tourism sector has deprived many African countries of one of their main sources of hard currency.
Kenya, which welcomed 2 million visitors in 2019, only got 300,000 visitors in the first half of this year, the tourism ministry said on Thursday.
"The numbers that I have announced yesterday is about 300,000 people who have come into the country. It's trickling in. Our target is 2 million, because we had 2 million in 2019, but 2019 is a gone year. We need to think differently to create another post-2019," he added.
Britain's decision to put Kenya on its red list of countries had had a particularly significant impact, Balala said.
He called for a single, global protocol for travel to apply to all nations, to prevent rich nations from starving their African counterparts of travel and business opportunities.
Friday's meeting in Nairobi, hosted by the U.N. World Tourism Organization, discussed ways of reviving the sector, including by encouraging inter-African travel.
(Edwin Waita, Lisa Ntungicimpaye) - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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