The film industry continues playing an important role in promoting tourism across the African continent. This is because tourist decision are influenced by films they have watched.
This is the point made by all three speakers at a Global Editorial briefing session during Meetings Africa, a business events trade show owned by South African Tourism in partnership with Gauteng Tourism and Joburg Tourism Company.
All three speakers, Azania Muendane of Locations Africa, Christian Gakwaya, CEO of Rwanda Events and Multichoice Commission Editor Kabelo Moremi stressed that this could only be achieved by all parties being “intentional” about finding ways of film makers and other artists, the respective countries’ tourism authorities establishing treaties and agreements allowing for ease of collaborations.
According to Muendane, roughly 70 percent of the international film budget was spent on local goods and services, including location, transport, hotels, water, ablution facilities and even tea and coffee.
This said, Muendane, is part of improving local skills and ensuring that people going into another country recognised the presence of local skills.
“The film business encompasses all other business sectors. Even props – cameras, convention centres which are sometimes used as boardrooms and ports. So it impacts the tourism sector in a big way, said Muendane, who added: “If truth be told, if there was no camera, would anyone really know what a lion looks like?”.
Muendane said the film industry’s benefit to tourism is underscored by the fact than “84 percent choose a location to go as a tourist because of the film they have watched”.
Gakwaya reiterated the role of film tourism in promoting the local economy.
“If someone comes into another country, it’s like you are moving your entire life to another destination. So you need all your day to day needs met [at the new destination].
“The event industry is one of those industries that connects multiple industry at a bigger scale.”
He added that while it was important to attract events from other continents, it was also important for Africans to have their own events in their countries.
The music industry has already started showing what collaboration could achieve for the continent.
Moremi said film and music could also help collapse cultural and borders by allowing artists from different countries to collaborate.
“When you think of music, you think about the universal language. The African music soundscape is currently revered by the rest of the world. Look at how Afrobeats has done for the whole diaspora and Amapiano and where it is going.
“The collaborations that are already on the global scale. We have Asake, a Nigerian nominated for a song called Amapiano which is a South African genre. That is showing that united front and shows the power of collaboration that music has to communicate the story of Africa and of our music as a dance destination,” said Moremi.