Southern Africa’s economies are undergoing a significant transition away from coal dependency, and tourism is emerging as a vital catalyst for economic regeneration, job creation, and sustainable development. Recently, the SADC Tourism Alliance, in partnership with Nedbank and the NEPAD Business Foundation, convened a strategic forum where leaders from business and tourism highlighted the sector’s substantial potential to mitigate the impacts of the Just Energy Transition (JET).
“Tourism is much more than leisure and hospitality – it’s a foundational driver of economic resilience, especially in regions facing the profound impacts of transitioning away from extractive industries,” explained Natalia Rosa, Project Lead for the SADC Tourism Alliance.
Tourism’s current economic footprint is substantial yet often understated, influencing around 12% of national vehicle purchases primarily via the car rental sector, and accounting for 12–15% of retail purchases nationwide. Highlighting tourism’s broader economic capacity, Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa, CEO of the Tourism Business Council of South Africa (TBCSA) and interim Chair of the SADC Tourism Alliance, pointed to the transformative example of Limpopo’s Nandoni Dam. Originally an infrastructure project, the dam evolved into a vibrant economic hub, boosting local hospitality, fishing, and tourism services.
Structured enterprise development programmes have proven their ability to rapidly scale tourism-related businesses across the region. Akash Singh, CEO of Sigma International, detailed how his organisation currently supports 300–500 businesses, ranging from local tour operations to catering enterprises. He underscored the critical role digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, play in empowering rural entrepreneurs – especially women – to develop competitive businesses remotely, significantly enhancing local economic inclusion.
Corporate success stories further reinforce tourism’s growing role in economic restructuring:
- City Lodge Hotel Group has incubated 47 SMEs in three years, successfully integrating 16 into their national operations in vital sectors such as waste management and landscaping.
- Anglo American’s Zimele programme, in collaboration with Sigma International, demonstrates the effectiveness of mining-tourism partnerships. The initiative has supported over 22,000 jobs and distributed over R500 million in small business loans, achieving an impressive 92% recovery rate.
- Nedbank’s Women in Tourism programme has directly created more than 1,600 jobs across nine provinces, enabling significant business growth, access to finance, and the formation of valuable joint ventures.
A key insight from the forum was tourism’s distinctive capability to meet the dual mandates of Enterprise and Supplier Development (ESD) and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG). This strategic convergence positions tourism as uniquely attractive for corporate investment aimed at sustainable and inclusive growth.
Participants strongly advocated the establishment of a dedicated Tourism-JET Working Group to streamline coordination, scale successful initiatives, and enhance public-private collaboration throughout the region.
“Tourism must sit at the heart of Southern Africa’s Just Energy Transition. It offers the type of inclusive, scalable economic foundation needed to build long-term resilience,” concluded Rosa.
The Nedbank/Nepad Business Foundation Networking Forum is a collaborative initiative of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) Business Foundation (NBF) and Nedbank. It serves as a strategic platform to foster dialogue, partnerships, and actionable solutions aimed at driving inclusive and sustainable economic and social development across the African continent. As a key proponent of Africa’s growth agenda, the NBF is dedicated to advancing initiatives that promote long-term prosperity and resilience for communities and businesses alike.
This strategic forum was also supported by the Joint Action NaturAfrica / Climate Resilience and Natural Resource Management (C-NRM) Programme, co-funded by the European Union (EU) and the German Government and implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.