The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has signed a partnership agreement with Tourism Ethiopia to provide advisory and technical support in a bid to improve the economic performance of the country’s tourism sector.
The partnership, which was signed by Tourism Ethiopia CEO, Lensa Mekonnen, and IFC Regional Director for Eastern Africa, Jumoke Jagun-Dokunumu, provides a framework for advisory support to be implemented over a three-year programme in partnership with Tourism Ethiopia and other public and private sector stakeholders.
The programme aims to increase Ethiopia’s competitiveness in the meetings, incentives, conferences, and events (MICE) sector, as well as stopover tourism. Ethiopia has been lagging behind its regional peers with regard to the MICE sector, and was ranked 89th globally with 12 meetings recorded.
Jagun-Dokunumu said the IFC was willing to support the tourism sector as it was one of the top employers globally. She said Ethiopia’s strategic location, and its hosting of numerous diplomatic missions and international agencies, provided a competitive advantage in the tourism sector.
“Given its world-class natural, cultural, and historic assets, as well as high-performing airline advantage, Ethiopia has enormous opportunities to expand its tourism industry,” she said.
Mekonnen appreciated IFC’s advisory support to boost and improve the tourism sector, particularly MICE and stopover tourism.
She said the implementation of the programme would focus on robust data collection and empirical analysis of relevant tourism segments, including global practices for benchmarking, capacity building, alleviating investment constraints and consultative dialogue with the stakeholders.
