Development Account Projects
Strengthening the competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises in the tourism sector of six developing countries in the Economic Community of West African States subregion
Background:
The tourism sector is of strategic importance to developing countries, capable of providing a country with a major source of employment, income and foreign-exchange earnings. The tourism sector also facilitates the development of entrepreneurship, particularly in terms of small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as providing an opportunity for sustainable economic diversification. By combining information and communications technology (ICT) as a tool for development and tourism, the number one sector worldwide – it will be possible to bring forward growing economic opportunities for small and local actors in the tourism sector. Being an information-intensive industry, tourism should be supported by competitive collaboration information technology schemes that could be addressed through the design of innovative networking models. This would allow local stakeholders to better organize and promote themselves.
The project will address the aforementioned issues through participative e-tourism strategies and by capacity-building and network-oriented activities, which should integrate all stakeholders in local empowerment and the dissemination and sharing of knowledge. 6 beneficiary countries will be selected from the ECOWAS subregion of Africa. The main target users of the project are the government authorities responsible for designing and implementing the national e-strategy in this field and tourism-related institutions; small and medium-sized enterprises; and industry and sector associations and organizations, including tourist operators in the beneficiary countries.
The project will be headed by UNCTAD, in collaboration with ECA. The project will seek to cooperate with relevant international organisations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), as well as with academic and other institutions.
Objective:
To contribute to local empowerment, inclusion and competitiveness of tourism stakeholders, through capacity-building and development activities, by innovative ICT-driven networking and models for the management and sharing of knowledge.
Expected accomplishments:
- Increased understanding of decision-makers (at public and private levels) about the positive externalities of ICT tools for small and medium-sized tourism enterprises, through the design of a model of a knowledge management system and coherent replicable training material for the benefit of all tourism stakeholders
- Increased capacity and skills of the beneficiary tourism destination countries in the preparation and implementation of innovative business models and ICT-related solutions, to enhance their competitiveness and allow them to add value to their economy.
- Improved competitiveness of tourism stakeholders by fostering of competitive collaboration at the national and regional levels, through an increase of public and private sector partnerships.
Implementation status:
This project began implementation in 2008, with the first main activity being the development of a specialized and standardized training package and a replicable learning model which will be easily customized and improved according to beneficiaries' evolving needs, thereby enabling local industry and skills, sovereignty and security distribution. It will be followed by a process of identification of local counterparts for project implementation and participation in the network and the execution of beneficiary country case studies that will be on-going until 2010. The project will also begin organizing workshops which will take place in all beneficiary countries for national needs assessment for the public and the private sector, strengthening ICT-related skills in the tourism sector by building on national existing capacities, and an executive session to launch the network. During the same time period, the publication and dissemination of a consensus-based guiding manual on the findings of both the case studies and the needs and assessment workshops undertaken in each beneficiary country.
