South Africa Launches Historic Tourism Equity Fund That May Serve as Global Model
Photo Credit: South Africa's new tourism equity fund will provide capital for qualifying Black-owned and controlled tourism projects, in an effort to transform tourism into an inclusive industry. Getty Images / Adrian Wojcik
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 lev
