Like a lot of people, I love traveling when I am on vacation. Unfortunately (for my own country), I tend to travel abroad to spend my money. One of the reasons is that I want to discover new countries whenever possible. However, the main reason is that our country is not tourists friendly! Traveling within the DRC is very expensive! It can be more expensive than travelling abroad, accommodation are not always adequate, infrastructures are insufficient, etc.
In addition to that we need to deal with our immigration services, even as Congolese! And yes, when you travel within the DRC you have to go through immigration and produce useless documents such as « ordre de mission ». Why should I go through the immigration at the airport when I take a flight from Kinshasa to Matadi?! What is even more ridiculous is that I can do the same trip by road and there will be no immigration to go through? So what is exactly the point of controlling us at the airport for local flights? I was once asked for my ID on the parking of the local airport in Kinshasa by a woman telling me she was from the borders police!!! What was she doing on that parking?!?! Maybe I missed something...
I mentioned in my previous post that it was urgent for that we diversify our economy. Why can we just start with tourism!? It will create thousands of jobs and bring in desperately needed foreign currencies.
To put this into perspective, let's use some data here. Today, tourism contribution to the DRC GDP is only 1.8% while it represents 8,9% for the South African economy! In relative terms, it is 5 times more but in absolute value it represents more than 31 billion dollars! And 31 billion dollars represents 82% of our own GDP!
That's right, with tourism only, South Africa is generating as much as 82% of our entire economy!!!
The question is: "Why can't we be a tourism champion?". Personally, I see no reason why. We have one the most beautiful countries in the world and yes I am biased but still! We have more national national parks than most countries with unique species, we have falls, volcanos, mountains (some with real snow- No need to go in a mall in Dubai) lacs, beaches, forrest and most importantly an amazing friendly people!
First, if we could simplify the obtention of visa, it would be great! We are behaving like tourists are going to run away with our gorillas or our copper on their back. The difficulty for foreign (both tourists and business people) in obtaining visa is insane! We have colleagues from London asking for visas on arrival because the process to get a visa in our Embassy in London looks like Koh Lanta!
Second, ... actually it is time to get back to work to make money for my next trip, probably abroad...
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