Skift Take
Work to transform diversity and inclusion, particularly in tourism, takes guts — like South Africa’s groundbreaking new public-private fund for Black-owned tourism projects. It might just be precedent-setting.
Long-term solutions tackling the lack of diversity, equity and inclusion in the travel industry, particularly in the U.S. and Europe, have been surfacing over the past eight months since last summer’s global racial protests, albeit at a snail's pace.
On the other side of the Atlantic, one destination is creating change where it's least expected: at the top. In a bold move that has startled its tourism industry, which continues to reel from Covid’s impact, South Africa’s government this month opened an $82 million "Tourism Equity Fund" to provide capital — through a combination of debt finance, concessional loans and grants — to qualifying new or existing tourism and hospitality projects that are at least 51 percent Black South African-owned and controlled.
Spearheaded by South Africa's Department of Tourism, in collaboration with the Small Enterprise Finance Agency (SEFA), this public-private fund is the first of its kind in South Africa — and possibly at a global level — in that it is expressly intended to diversify the country's tourism industry, which is predominantly white-owned and operated, by opening the door to ownership and equity for South African entrepreneurs of color of varying socioeconomic backgrounds, including women and youth.
"No one saw this coming, it was a big surprise," Naledi Khabo, Africa Tourism Association CEO, said. "Everyone expected a big relief package but they didn’t expect this type of package."
Black South African tourism leaders and entrepreneurs have said the fund was a step in the right direction.
"The launch of the fund is a critical milestone in the tourism sector in responding to lack of transformation [ ] that has been an albatross around the sector's neck since the dawn of democracy," South Africa tourism minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane said in a statement, noting that the resolution to establish a fund pre-dated Covid. "Broadening participation in the tourism sector to South Africans of all races, ages and genders can only enrich the tourism sector to be more competitive and sustainable in the long run."
South Africa’s tourism equity fund is a bold, innovative effort with the potential of shaking up the future of tourism experiences in one of Africa’s most popular long-haul destinations. If successful, it could have an influential effect on other tourism destinations at a global level, the majority of which remain plagued by similar equity and inclusion issues.
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