Ghana is hosting the maiden United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) Regional Congress on women empowerment in the Tourism sector – Focus on Africa.

The 3-day congress (25 – 27 November, 2019) aims at analysing the current challenges and opportunities for women’s empowerment in the tourism sector, creating a synergy among the African countries and key stakeholders for greater cooperation in the promotion of women’s participation in the tourism sector and it will be held at the Accra International Conference Centre.

According to the second edition of the Global Report on Women in Tourism to be published by UNWTO, in collaboration with UN Women, GIZ, the World Bank and

Amadeus, ‘tourism has the potential to contribute to greater gender equality, providing women with more opportunities for empowerment than other sectors. It is also recognised more as a strategic tool for inclusive development’.

In 2018, Ghana hosted its maiden Women in Tourism Summit, a platform that served as a strategic driver to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment, under the theme: ‘DRIVING WOMEN EMPOWERMENT THROUGH TOURISM DEVELOPMENT’.The summit explored how to drive women empowerment through tourism development. It also created an opportunity for women operating across the entire tourism value chain to network and learn from each other and to transform the tourism economy to become a fundamental pillar in advancing the role of women in tourism entrepreneurs, professionals and leaders.

The maiden UNWTO Regional Congress will bring together a number of tourism stakeholders and keynote speakers in a series of panels to discuss and share best practice and set common proposals to address gender equality in the tourism sector for inclusive development in Africa.

The themes to be addressed at the congress will include: Tourism Policies to Enable Gender Equality; Entrepreneurship in Tourism, An Effective Means for Women to Lead in The Tourism Sector; Financing Women Empowerment Through Tourism – Challenges and The Way Forward and education and Technology as A Tool for Women’s Socio-Economic Advancement in Tourism.

The congress is targeting Tourism stakeholders – National Tourism Administrations, Tourism Ministries, public authorities and public gender-equality institutions, private sector representatives with interest in working on women’s empowerment and tourism development in the region, civil society and NGOs related to women’s empowerment and gender equality and Representatives from other sectors which have an impact and interest on women empowerment in the tourism sector in Africa.

The Regional Congress is to empower women to have greater opportunities to speed up the progress of women empowerment towards the SDGs and to improve women’s participation in the workforce, increase women’s entrepreneurship and women’s empowerment in the tourism sector.