By Foday Moriba Conteh
A book titled, “New Frontiers in Hospitality and Tourism Management in Africa” was launched by the Minister of Tourism and Cultural Affairs, Dr. Memunatu Pratt, on the 9th July 2021 via zoom.
The tourism, hospitality and event management book is authored by Senior Lecturers of the school of Hospitality and Tourism Management, University of Surrey, United Kingdom and Associate Professor of Marketing at Lagos Business School, Pan-Atlantic University, Nigeria. It provides a management perspective on the historical, contemporary and geographic landscape of hospitality and tourism in Africa, a critical appraisal of applicability of Western theories, gives insights from African management concepts and presents multi-disciplinary local and global viewpoints.
Launching the book and also giving the Policy Perspective from Sierra Leone, the Minister of Tourism and Cultural Affairs, Dr. Memunatu Pratt said it is important for her to participate in the Webinar launch and congratulated those who contributed extensively to the research of the book. With her Social Sciences background from related disciplines, Minister Pratt noted that the African perspective of tourism is not well grounded in terms of using academic, methodology and explanation in explaining to our people for tourism to be seen as a tool for national development, which she said the publication has done.
“What I like about the publication is that it deals with current issues and challenges, and the fact that most of the case studies are from Africa is a laudable thing,” she maintained. She said trying to find available literature in trying to understand the context of tourism in Africa is a challenge, but what she has read thus far in the publication is speaking to them as African Tourism Ministers in leading the change.
She stated that she became Minister of Tourism without having an idea on how the inter-connectedness would be between Government, hence she started by situating tourism within Government where there can be an inter-relationship between water, environment, climate change, road and electricity, and also getting the people to understand that tourism is about the people themselves who she said have a critical role to play.
Minister Pratt added that tourism did very well in Sierra Leone after Independence but because of the war and other tragedies, that faded away to an extent that successive Governments have not been putting much attention to the sector, but with the current Government, tourism is now a top-notch industry in changing the destiny of Sierra Leone. She noted that there is now a National Tourism Policy, Eco-Tourism Policy, reviewing the laws in order to integrate with other sector.
Dr. Pratt said that Sierra Leone’s tourism has been behind for far too long but the accelerated speed it has taken is very encouraging. She maintained that the launch of the book is very timely as it explains the challenges and opportunities of the tourism sector in Africa saying that she will recommend the book to Sierra Leone’s Tourism school.
