Issues in adopting the marketing strategy for tourism development in Africa : the case of Ghana

The purpose of our paper is to provide a commentary on the key challenges facing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the Sub-Saharan African (SSA) international tourism marketing strategies. The rationale for the paper is that tourism, both domestic and international, and in all its genres (ecotourism, leisure tourism, medical tourism, etc.) is, and will for the foreseeable future be, a potent force of economic development in SSA at large, and in Ghana in particular. Relying heavily on statistics from the World Tourism Organization, we explore the key sector (i.e. the SME sector) at the forefront of the initiative as a means for starting the debate on how to move the discourse forward. Both policy and international business implications are inferred in our summation.