Menongue - The Minister of Culture and Tourism, Filipe Zau, said on Tuesday in Cuando Cubango that the Angolan Okavango region will become a framework to promote tourism and employability, as a result of national and foreign investments.
The minister was speaking to the press, after disembarking at Comandante Kwenha airport, in the city of Menongue, to participate, from the 17th to the 22nd of this month, in the 1st Investors' Forum of the Angolan region of Okavango, which will be attended by over 200 guests, between nationals and foreigners.
According to the government official, the forum is expected to improve the business environment and, in this way, open up investment, taking into account that one of the major gains was the exemption from visas, making the country more open to the world.
“Nowadays, most people are no longer interested in big hotels, but rather see nature, animals and have more direct contact with the population”, the minister said, before adding that the Okavango region, which is considered a sanctuary of tourism, could become a milestone to boost the sector in Angola.
For the government official, it is not only through hotels that tourism is carried out, but through caravanning, camping and bird watching, as well as adventure tourism, where tourists can climb Angola by bicycle, contacting people.
On this tour, he highlighted, tourists normally bring foreign currency, leaving money on their cards, a very important factor, hence the need to create essential accommodation conditions without major implications for investment.
It should be noted that the holding of the 1st Investor Forum in the Angolan region of Okavango is the initiative of the President of the Republic, João Lourenço, who on 24 July 2023, after a visit to his Botswana counterpart, Mokgweetsi Eric Masisi, approached the subject, within the existing cooperation between the two countries.
On the occasion, the Angolan Head of State defined tourism as a priority sector in the economic diversification strategy, which involves taking advantage of the tourist potential of the Angolan region of Okavango, an area that forms part of the Okavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Area, brought together by Angola, Namibia , Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. ALK/FF/ALH/DOJ
