ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies specific initiatives that sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries need to ponder and adapt in order to develop robust and competitive tourism sectors. The chapter reviews the tourism literature and rationalizes that tourism holds enormous potentials for SSA to achieve sustainable development and alleviate mass poverty, if it capitalizes strategically on the competitive but profitable global tourism market. This chapter submits that tourism’s potencies can be actualized only if some critical “inputs” are put in place in a strategic rather than haphazard manner. The latter is the manner in SSA thus far, and its reversal is a crucial first step to actualize the region’s tourism potentials. First, the chapter develops profiles of modern tourism and tourists. Second, using these profiles, the chapter identifies the requisite inputs for competitive tourism development. Third, the status of each input is examined to vividly depict SSA’s tourism challenges. Finally, pragmatic initiatives are prescribed for effective tourism development in SSA.
