Southern Africa has an enormous potential for tourism growth but levels of development vary from countries and further investment is required, a research has shown.

While South Africa and Mauritius lead the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries in terms of tourism growth, potentials in small countries like Lesotho and Swaziland are emerging but promising, said Grant Thornton, an international audit firm.

Grant Thornton was tasked by the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and the 14-nation SADC to assess potential tourism growth in the region.

Gillian Saunders, spokesperson of the audit firm, said on Tuesday the potential growth in the SADC region was enormous, reported South Africa's government news service BuaNews.

The SADC region enjoyed 15.1 million tourist arrivals last year, compared to 12.2 million in the previous year, it was announced at the 25th SADC Summit in Gaborone, Botswana, this August. This accounted for 1.95 percent of the global arrivals.

However, "the size of the industry, its relative importance, its stage of development differs from one country to another," Saunders said.

This has had a barring on the type of investment promotion activities appropriate for a particular country. She said South Africa and Mauritius were advanced countries regarding tourism with 2.9 percent and 4.2 percent of gross domestic product growth respectively.

Botswana and Namibia were "still maturing." While Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Madagascar and Malawi were said to be emerging countries in terms of tourism growth, Zimbabwe had regressed from maturing.

Saunders said that tourism potentials in Lesotho and Swaziland "were now promising."

NEPAD, an initiative endorsed by African leaders to achieve an overall revitalization of the continent, had prioritized tourism as a factor with potential to diversify economic opportunities, generate income and foreign exchange earnings for African countries.

This is in line with the African Union/NEPAD Tourism Action Plan adopted at the third General Assembly of the AU in Ethiopia in July last year, which identified the promotion of investment in tourism infrastructure and products as the top priority.

Source: Xinhua