Africa most improved region for travel and tourism development, says WEF

Africa has shown the most improvement in the World Economic Forum’s Travel & Tourism Development Index (TTDI) performance since 2019, with 16 out of 19 regional economies improving their scores. 

The index is a biennial report published in collaboration with the University of Surrey, which analyses the travel and tourism (T&T) sectors of 119 countries around a range of factors and policies including five main pillars: enabling environment, T&T policy and enabling conditions, infrastructure & services,  T&T resources, and T&T sustainability.

It found that less mature, low to middle-income economies exhibited the most significant enhancement in performance between 2019 and 2024, accounting for 52 out of 71 economies that improved their TTDI scores. Sub-Saharan Africa improved by 2.1%, while North Africa’s overall score increased by 1.1%. Still, the report found that high-income economies generally continue to have more favourable conditions for travel and tourism development. Africa still has the lowest TTDI score of any region, with an average score of 3.33 compared to 4.26 in Europe and Eurasia and 4.11 in Asia-Pacific.

While Africa’s industry remains small by global standards – accounting for just 1.8% of international tourist arrivals compared to 64.9% for Europe –  sub-Saharan Africa had the highest score for T&T Socioeconomic Impact, with the industry in Africa generating, on average, over 21% more jobs for each direct position than the TTDI mean, and with an average of over 43% of the sector workforce employed in segments that are considered relatively high wage.