Tanzania to hold international conference with tourism agenda

By Apolinari Tairo
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (eTN) - With a theme of "Tourism and Infrastructure Development," the eighth Leon Sullivan Summit is scheduled to be held in Tanzania to promote African tourist products and development of infrastructure in the entire African continent as a whole.

Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete launched a global campaign that would promote and attract more North Americans travelers, mostly those of African origin to participate the mid-next year's Leon Sullivan Summit to be held in Tanzania's northern tourist city of Arusha.

Targeting the African tourism as its main agenda, the eight Leon Sullivan Summit is expected to boost African-North American tourist business and other opportunities available between African Diaspora in United States and those in Africa.

The Tanzanian president said the Leon Sullivan summits facilitated the active role of the late Reverend Leon Sullivan's ideas, particularly his dream of building a bridge between Africa and America.

"Indeed the Sullivan summits are increasingly succeeding in establishing the bridge through which Africa and the African Diaspora interact and pursue their collective well-being and interests," Kikwete said when launching a website for the Summit over the weekend.

"What we are doing here is our desire to have our people become aware of what the Sullivan Summits are all about, what they stand for, and the principles and ideas behind them," he said.

Mr. Kikwete had agreed to host the historical summit that will take place from June 2 to 6, 2008. The event is expected to draw over 4,000 participants, mostly from United States, Tanzania and other African states.

He received a torch as a host of the scheduled summit from the former Nigerian President Mr. Olusegun Obasanjo during the last summit held in Abuja, Nigeria last year.

Showing to be most interested in tourism development for his country, President Kikwete said the eighth Leon Sullivan conference will be taking place in Arusha, the center of Tanzania's tourism.

"I welcome you to meet in Arusha, the center of the African continent where tourism is dominating and where is the home of the magnificent tourist attractions of Ngorongoro, Serengeti and Mount Kilimanjaro," President Kikwete told the delegates in Abuja last year.

He said the scheduled summit would provide wide opportunities to American tourist suppliers and the African tourist product sellers in exchanging business under the African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) that was initiated by the US government.

Leon Sullivan Foundation has been promoting business between Africa and the rich African Americans across the Atlantic to come together and raise resources for development of the African continent.

The 2008 Leon Sullivan Foundation conference will be the second biggest American gathering to take place in Arusha, exactly ten years after the 23rd Africa Travel Association (ATA) conference took place in the same venue.

Chairman of the foundation and former US ambassador to United Nations (UN) Andrew Young said he will be working closely with the Tanzanian president in attracting prominent business executives in America to participate the scheduled conference.

The Sullivan summits are organized by the Leon H. Sullivan Foundation to highlight key issues and best practices, stimulate discussion and define opportunities, promote private enterprise and foster high-level strategic partnerships.

Creative and innovative initiatives emerge out of discussions and negotiations at the summits, and new relationships are brokered in order to make those initiatives a reality.

Located exactly at the center of African continent, Arusha is now set to welcome African American delegates in its fast growing tourist image through modern hotels, lodges, restaurants and fleets of tourist vehicles.

The Arusha International Conference Center (AICC) and the Ngurdoto Mountain Lodge have been added with conference facilities to accommodate big international conferences.

The eighth Leon Sullivan conference will be the first of its kind gathering in Eastern Africa to take place on the closer foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa located in northern Tanzania.

July 23, 2007   Posted in: Africa