Picture: Mozambique’s Minister of Culture and Tourism, Eldevina Materula
Mozambique made its 6th appearance at this year’s Africa’s Travel Indaba in Durban, South Africa. Presenting 38 exhibitors at the trade floor, the country touted its new e-visa which has seen an upward trajectory in its tourism figures.
Mozambique’s Minister of Culture and Tourism, Eldevina Materula in an interview revealed the paradigm shift of its visa regulations to promote not only tourism but create a seamless environment to thrive.
Since the introduction of the e-visa program, we have seen a weekly average of 500 American travellers visiting the country along with other European countries such as France and the UK. Chinese travellers have also developed an interest in our country as well. This is well beyond tourism as it is helping drive investments to Mozambique.
She revealed that in the coming weeks, Singita, the one and only luxury hospitality brand will be opening in Mozambique.
On the promotion of intra-African travels, the Minister said Mozambique is committed to regional tourism development.
“We had a very important discussion yesterday in the dialogue of ministers. We definitely want to change. The decision was to stop talking and act. For that, we are with our colleagues and we want to act now. It will be important now for the next steps; to get together with our international partners and organizations that we are members of. I would mention the UNWTO where Mozambique is a member of the Executive Council. I would maybe say in Southern Africa where we have the advantage of three of South African countries being part of the executive council. And in that form, we want to raise our unique voice to fight and to put on the table our main challenges that haven’t changed; the transportation, the air connectivity, and the brand in Africa.”
The Minister stressed the importance of partnerships and coming together as African countries to facilitate seamless travel in and out from one African country to the other.
She said “We want to send out a positive message. We are responsible to improve tourism in Africa. We also as African countries are responsible to increase and change the tourism sector. Because of that, we are making partnerships with each other.
For Mozambique, we signed an agreement with Eswatini and South Africa Mpumalanga and now we are promoting our countries together. With the meetings that we have already had in this Indaba, we are definitely going to move forward with Zimbabwe and Malawi. Tourism is about being together, it is about giving the chance to our citizens, local citizens to travel into our country in the best conditions.”
In addition, Mozambique has started the execution of e-visas and recently implemented the exemption of visas to 29 countries.
This article was published in the July Issue of VoyagesAfriq Travel Magazine
