Rwanda has received two Africa Travel and Tourism Leadership Awards for championing tourism sustainability and innovation in business tourism in Africa. The country scooped the 1st Runner Up for Championing Tourism Sustainability Award and the 1st Runner Up for the Most Innovative and Sustainable Business Tourism and Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Events and Exhibitions (MICE) destination in Africa Award. The awards given during the Africa Tourism Leadership Forum (ATLF) on October 27, aim at recognizing game-changing individuals or groups’ initiatives being pursued across the sector. ATLF is a Pan-African dialogue platform that brings together key stakeholders of Africa’s travel, tourism, hospitality, and aviation sectors to network, share insights, and devise strategies for intra-Africa travel and tourism growth across the continent. The forum ran under a theme dubbed “Igniting intra-Africa tourism through inclusive intra-Africa trade, partnerships and investment” from October 24 to 26 in Gaborone, Botswana. Tourism has been at the heart of Rwanda’s development effort with the sector being the country’s leading source of foreign exchange earnings. In July, a prominent American news magazine, TIME, named Rwanda among the world’s top 50 destinations for the year 2022 based on developments in the country’s tourism sector, such as the first 18-hole golf course in the city at the new Kigali Golf Resort and Villas, and the opening of the Nyandungu Wetland Ecotourism Park. RDB predicts the tourism industry to generate up to $360 million (approx. Rwf372 billion) revenue at the end of 2022, after ensuring a recovery rate of 80 percent from Covid-19 impacts. Conference tourism alone is expected to increase revenues to $43 million from a total of 72 conferences that will attract 40,000 international guests in 2023, up from $38.5 million recorded in the fiscal year 2021/2022.
