After a 6 hour long meeting held at Serena Hotel Kigali after the Kwita Izina Gorilla naming ceremony a new group of committed  Africa based travel promoters formed an organisation TeamAfrica to jointly promote destinations in Africa to Africans. It was  observed that Africans promote themselves mostly to non Africans while most Africans travel to non African destinations. The result of this disconnect is that Africa a continent of 1 billion people receives about 53 million tourists annually while a country like France with less than 80 million people receives over 70 million tourists. This appalling situation has left many tourism practitioners pondering on what to do. At the sidelines of Indaba in South Africa discussions were held among players about how to rescue Africa. Similar discussions were held at Sanganai in Zimbabwe with talks about branding Africa dominating the discussions. It came to a head at the UNWTO Branding Africa Conference held in Ghana recently. Many Government driven policies were agreed in Ghana to be supported by African Union and the African council of Tourism ministers.

Considering the weak and very tenuous life span of tourism ministers in Africa it was decided at the meeting in Kigali to form an independent organisation run by professional Travel promoters in Africa already doing the business of promoting Africa to work together to promote Africa as a destination to Africans. The main drivers of TeamAfrica are Mr . Ikechi Uko Lagos based  Publisher of atqnews.com. Kampala based Prof . Wolfgang Thome, managing Editor ETN for Africa, Denis Gathanju Nairobi based Ceo of Safari Communications and Sandra Idossou, Brazzaville based publisher of The Service Magazine. Between the four persons involved they have visited all countries in Africa and attended all travel expos in Africa with contacts across all nations of Africa and language skills across all African Nations.

TeamAfrica will engage more people across different nations in Africa to create a platform to jointly promote events and destinations in Africa and also to act as a defense for Africa and it’s tourism industry.

The first project TeamAfrica is embarking will be a two year search for the 21 wonders of Africa.  The first shortlist of 200 African destinations will be released on the 1st of January 2016.There will be reduction in the number of destinations every 6 months until the final result to be unveiled in Addis Ababa on the 9th of September 2018.  September is a special month for Africa as it was the month of the birth of African union.

TeamAfrica will be using platforms like Akwaaba Travel Market in Nigeria, Indaba in South Africa, Sanganai in Zimbabwe, magical Kenya in Kenya,WTM in London, ITB in Berlin, FITUR in Madrid to launch the shortlist.  It is hoped that Africans in voting to choose the top 21 will develop an ownership of the identified destinations which will act as bucket list for all Africans.

After the meeting by TeamAfrica Carmen Nibigira the coordinator for the East African Tourism Platform and Rosemary Mugambi the regional sales director of the Serena Hotels in East Africa immediately pledged support for TeamAfrica and the project.

Members of TeamAfrica before dispersing for their various countries agreed to recruit competent players across Africa to enlarge the group. They are also to brief relevant Stakeholders across Africa including Tourism boards, council of ministers, AU, Retosa, Ecowas and others.TeamAfrica will be attending Magical Kenya Travel Expo, Mombasa in October and Akwaaba African Travel Market ,Lagos in November.