Sierra Leone’s Minister of Tourism and Cultural Affairs, Dr. Memunatu Pratt, is currently in Nigeria to attend the 2022 Akwaaba Travel Marketing in Lagos. She is among the winners 100 Africa Travel Women award and also winner of Best Tourism Minister in West Africa.
In this interview with Africa Travel Herald, she talks, among other things, about the need for greater intra-regional travel in West Africa and incentives available in Sierra Leone for investors in hospitality and tourism, and other businesses. Excerpts:

Sierra Leone is having a high-power delegation to the 2022 Akwaaba Africa Travel Market, what do you want to achieve with this participation?
…Over the years, we have been dependent on things like diamond…of course you know the story of diamond. So, as a result of that, the government has put keen attention on the development and expansion of tourism. So whatsoever international activities or regional activities is there, it is imperative that as a government, that we participate.
So, when we got this invitation…as a matter of fact, I am one of the 100 nominees for the award (Top 100 Tourism Women in Africa). People voted and eventually, I came out on top as the best tourism minister in West Africa.
We looked at the sub-region, quite a lot of intra-regional tourism activities is not taking place. That is affecting us, because if you go to east and southern Africa, you will see the way they are operating and you will see the amount of support agencies like SADC is giving, which is not happening in West Africa.
And for me since I took up the office, we have done a lot of work in east and southern Africa, also in Europe, the United States, China, Japan and so on, we have been to all of these places, but I was a bit concerned that I have been to so many different places for good marketing work, but West Africa is missing in this arrangement. I took a decision that in 2022, we shall give a lot of attention to West African networking. So, when this came, I said it was good idea.
But prior to that, we were in even in Ghana. We attended the Intra Tourism Trade Expo in Ghana wherein I was the guest speaker for the trade and tourism interconnectivity. So, it is all of these things that informed us that we now wish to ensure that we intensify not only the relationship, but we try as a sub-region to mobilise and organize governments, private sector, civil societies and the media to focus on tourism as a vehicle to develop the economy of West Africa.
Secondly,to use tourism as a way in which we can be able to use our natural resources and thirdly support and build infrastructure, improve the road network, improve rail connectivity, improve air connectivity and then link that to trade and investment.
This is the bigger vision that I have and I think it is an opportunity for us to begin to work with different governments and private sector so that we bring tourism up to speed in West Africa.
One of the problems in West Africa that affects intra- regional travel is the issue of connectivity, how is the Sierra Leonian government, on its part, working to solve this problem?
Well, that is the issue. So, what I am trying to do, and I am trying to see how we can have this coalition…is for us to add our voices and advocate at various levels. There is need for us to go back to the old decisions which we have for West Africa, like the West Africa railway, West Africa transport and national highways, and of course look at the coastline. So, if we go back and try to establish that regional connectivity, improve on the air connectivity, get more domestic flights, get chartered flights and all of those, if we go back as a region and look at it, that is going to help, but as it is, we need to restart those discussions again. If you improve connectivity, you are actually improving services; you’re improving trade, and on the back of that, of course, you have inhouse tourism.
Now, it is very difficult for people to travel using the land borders. You have a lot of barriers. So, we need to talk about most of these. Fortunately, West Africa is talking about movement of persons, if you push that, then of course you pushing movement of persons for tourism and trade.
Nigerians see Ghana as a kind of preferred destination in West Africa, what are some of the tourism products you have in place that could be attractive to the Nigerian tourists?
Let me just say that we know the historical ties between Nigeria and Sierra Leone and it goes far back. In the last 20 and 30 years, you saw the role Nigeria played in ECOMOG to restore peace to Sierra Leone, and then historically, we have very strong family ties, the names and everything. We also have a large Nigerian community to in Sierra Leone. We also have other big Nigerian businesses in Sierra Leone.
The point is this: what I think we have not been able to do is to connect these advantages to tourism. This is really what I am looking at now: how do we leverage on that for tourism. So, what this means is that we look at other things which we are doing well, then ensure that we try to build tourism around them.
We have flights that go to Sierra Leone; we need to have more flights between us.
What I think personally is that we have not been able to pitch up this discussion on tourism and think, for me, it could be the first time that the discussion on tourism between Sierra Leone and Nigeria has taken this space. All our discussions have been economic ties, trade and investment, and we have not been able to tie that tourism, I think that is the missing link. Then of course, once we do that, a lot of things are going to be put in place and it is also going to increase the level of bilateral engagements between the two countries.
That brings us to the question of the tourism products that looking at to market to Nigerians and other African countries. What are some of your key tourism assets and products?
Well, for Sierra Leone, two major things that I know, one is that we have so many beaches in Sierra Leone, and we have so many islands.
That is new to me…
Oh, so many islands, lots of beaches, beautiful beaches couples with our hospitality and culture. These will sell well for Nigerians, that is leisure tourism. Apart from that, we have ecotourism facilities.
The second is heritage tourism, we have a very strong heritage together. So, these are areas to be exploited. There is also a lot of interest in investment and trade.
Yes, talking about investments, for Nigerians who might want to invest in the area of tourism and hospitality, are there incentives?
We have a lot of incentives: wavers, five years duty waivers, and then access to land, depending on how you want to do it, and thirdly, the laws are very protective of investments. Now we have a one-stop shop where you can go to and register your business, it all depends on what you want to do and which industry you want to go into-if you want to go into mining, you want to go into tourism, of course there is need for you go on exploratory visit and have discussions with people, after which you can do your proposal to whichever ministry you want to work wi th. You can then register your business, open your office and the incentives are there.
What is important I should say to everybody in Nigeria is that make sure that you do your investigation first and go to the right ministry or agency.
How about your ministry for tourism investments?
Of course, you can, you can contact my ministry in infotourism@ntca.sl, just search Sierra Leone ministry of tourism online, emails are all there, you can use that to contact us. It is open but it comes directly to me and my directors.