Roots Festival

Roots Festival will project West Africa

Written by AUSTIN JACOBSON

Tuesday, 18 January 2011 23:30

The tourism industry is gradually becoming the mainstay of many economies in the world including Africa’s. For instance, The Gambia heavily depends on tourism, which accounts for more than 70 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Products (GDP). In this interview during a tour of The Gambia, AUSTIN JACOBSON, spoke with The Gambia’s Minister of Tourism and Culture, Fatou MAS Jobe Njie, who shed more light on The Gambian government’s efforts at improving the sector. Excerpts: The private sector has been the back bone of the tourism industry in The Gambia. What is the government doing to assist the sector to achieve its full potential? The government considers the sector to be important in the development of the economy. As a result, we set up the Gambia Investment Export Promotion Agency (GIEPA) to be very close to the private sector with regard to providing them with the required back up and assistance when they want to set up a business and also encourage foreign investors to come to Gambia.  We also have the Gambia Chamber of Commerce which works very closely with the private sector and when it comes to tourism, the ministry works closely with all the stakeholders; and all the stakeholders in the tourism sector are all private-driven. So we try as much as possible to meet the needs of the private sector because the Gambia’s government is very keen and determined to support their growth and development not just the supporting but providing infrastructure that will make the sector grow to the desired level. What is the government doing to sustain inflow of tourists despite the seasonal changes? Now The Gambia has been in tourism since 1965. Some over 40 years now we have very focused and packaged tours and we relied mainly on field tour operators mainly from the UK, Scandinavia and Germany. Now these people of course are interested in the sand, sun and beaches but gone are the days when this is the concentration and a lot of other packaged destinations are being put in place. The Gambia’s government still works closely with the private sector in this area. We want to now diversify and in order to create a year round tourism calendar, there is still a lot to do. Firstly, The Gambia is still not known; let’s take Nigeria for instance, there are still many people who don’t know Gambia, when you say Gambia they say Zambia and now in other to get tourists from Nigeria and order African destinations to come to Gambia we need to create the required awareness. We have to embark on aggressive destination marketing because to us this is very important and our number one priority. We need to develop regional tourism rather than depend on packaged tours. We have to encourage individual tourism; we need to encourage packaged tours from other African countries for leisure, birthdays, conferences, seminars and business meetings because all the facilities to host these functions are on ground. Another important thing is our product development. We need to look into and redevelop our product. We have a beautiful river and within those rivers we have over 20 islands. We need to be able to create and provide the necessary infrastructure and encourage transport tourism. As a government we need to look into sports tourism and more optical tourism. we need to look into eco-tourism and looking at diversifying from the sun, beaches and sand, opening up our doors to all year round tourism and one key element the government is working on right now is aggressive destination marketing. And to this end, we have developed a five-year marketing plan and a five-year business plan to map out the way forward and to achieve these objectives. The Roots Festival is coming up very soon. As it is, it is also a way to market the Gambia’s tourism potentials. Can you explain how you intend to use the festival to further boost your marketing drive? I think Roots is like what we call heritage tourism because we are encouraging African migrants and Africans in Diaspora to come back to their roots. Recently we have started airing the Roots series on our television every Tuesdays and Wednesdays because we intend to create awareness among our people on what happened to them years back. Kontar Kunte was born in Duffrey.  Duffrey is in the Gambia and that is why we are asking the Gambians in the Diaspora to come back and experience what it is to be a true African. Because when you are out there you do not know where you are coming from or where you belong and with this particular festival we are trying to use it to encourage African migrants in America and the Diasporas to come back to the Gambia to experience the Roots Festival. They may be tourists today but they could be investors tomorrow. We are also organizing this Roots Festival to coincide with the Black History month, which is February. This is the first time the Root Festival is being organized during the high season to pick up tourism attendance because usually, it is organized in June and because of the new trend now where we encourage packaged tours it could be from Nigeria, UK and around the world to come and experience the Roots programme. We have what we call the Roots pilgrimage where tourists go through the heritage trait of Duffrey. We also have the foot and path which is the rite of passage; you remember the film ROOTS-Kontar Kunte completed the rite of passage in Duffrey before being captured so we try to take the participants through the root and path. The opening ceremony is going to be like a carnival showing the true African culture. It could show case Nigeria, Ghana, Togo or any other African country. So, we want Africans to come, not just come, but as tourists and participate in the Festival that showcases the beauty of the Gambia.