Ghana and South Africa strengthen tourism ties with visa waiver agreement
The recent announcement of a visa waiver agreement between Ghana and South Africa has raised hopes for mutually beneficial tourism promotion between the two countries. Both Ghana and South Africa have focused on aggressive destination marketing in recent years.
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In August 2022, the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) signed a groundbreaking Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Gauteng Tourism Authority of South Africa. The MoU seeks to facilitate and strengthen trade, tourism, and investment relations between Ghana and its South African counterparts.
With tourism being a high source of revenue for both countries, the tourism authorities must build on this to cooperate, exchange knowledge, and leverage their learnings to maximize their tourism potential.
The agreement highlights areas of cooperation in various sections of tourism development, including joint destination marketing, leveraging MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Exhibitions) markets, and exchanging best practices in professional event coordination and support of SMMEs.
The GTA CEO, Akwasi Agyeman, and Gauteng Tourism CEO, Sthembiso Dlamini, signed the agreement, charting a new course for the nations' tourism sector.
In 2019 alone, Ghana recorded over 18,381 South African visitors, an impressive number that keeps growing annually.
"Ghana is fast becoming the vacation destination for the world, most especially in December. With the record numbers trooping into the country, it is important to share knowledge with the continent and gain some more insights on how to manage the influx of tourists into Ghana. We are optimistic this agreement will go a long way to Africa and not only Ghana on the global map as the preferred destination travel," Agyeman said.
Along with the high number of tourists also come numerous jobs for our nationals, and this is the way to go.
Ghana and South Africa continually sign agreements and put in place policies to facilitate easy travel and doing business with each other. The visa waiver agreement allows citizens of both countries to travel visa-free for a cumulative period of up to 90 days without recourse to work.
This agreement takes effect from November 1, 2023, as made known by Ghana's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration in a post on the social networking platform, X.