Rationalizing government's leadership and coordination roles in tourism development in Sub Sahara Africa

Tourism is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon which is best managed in a collaborative and coordinated manner. Collaboration and coordination in open social, political and economic systems with multiple actors and interests do not happen by chance, but require decisive leadership. This leadership is missing in tourism development in Sub Sahara Africa (SSA), resulting in the extant ineffective and inefficient reactive and disjointed tourism development approaches in the region. As a result, the region is the least competitive in the robust global tourism market. To enhance competitiveness and the dividends of tourism, this paper proposes that governments assume decisive leadership and coordination roles in tourism development. Multi-actor and multi-sector collaboration and coordination require a central force that has the requisite elements of neutrality or fairness, credibility, legitimacy, capacity and durability to efficiently and effectively lead and coordinate the stakeholders, in the case of this paper, tourism stakeholders in SSA. In SSA, this force is the government, based on reasons adduced in this paper. Some critical principles are delineated for adherence by governments, in order to effectively lead and coordinate tourism development.