Ghana’s Minister for Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Abla Dzifa Gomashie, has called on African governments to move beyond recognition of women’s contributions to the tourism sector and adopt targeted policies and investment to address the persistent gap between workforce participation and executive representation.
Gomashie made the call at the 2nd UN Tourism Regional Congress on Women Empowerment in Tourism in Africa, held in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe from April 29 to May 1, 2026. The congress brought together tourism ministers, policymakers, and industry stakeholders from across the continent to advance gender inclusion and develop concrete strategies for moving women into decision-making roles across the sector.
The minister acknowledged that women play a central and irreplaceable role across Ghana’s tourism value chain, contributing to festivals, cuisine, fashion and hospitality, but said that contribution does not translate proportionally into leadership or executive influence. She pointed to structural constraints, including unequal access to capital, limited entrepreneurship support systems and insufficient capacity-building opportunities, as the primary obstacles keeping women out of senior positions.
The broader picture across Africa reflects the same tension. Women make up 69% of the hospitality workforce in Africa but remain disproportionately concentrated in lower-paid or informal roles and are significantly underrepresented in executive leadership.
Gomashie said improving gender inclusion at leadership levels would enhance productivity, innovation and competitiveness across the sector, particularly as African countries increasingly position tourism as a driver of economic diversification and job creation. She highlighted Ghana’s existing efforts to address the imbalance, citing programmes aimed at improving women’s access to financing, strengthening entrepreneurship support structures, and expanding skills development in the sector.
The minister stressed that sustained policy alignment and targeted investment are necessary to ensure women’s significant contributions translate into greater institutional influence and that closing the leadership gap requires coordinated commitment rather than piecemeal interventions.
The congress aims to move beyond foundational empowerment toward leadership pathways and decisive institutional action, focusing on catalysing policies and partnerships that transform women from workforce participants into primary architects and decision-makers of Africa’s tourism landscape.
The first edition of the congress was hosted by Ghana in Accra in November 2019, making the country’s engagement in this second edition a continuation of its long-standing role in advancing gender equity in the regional tourism agenda. Outcomes from the Victoria Falls congress are expected to feed into policy frameworks at both national and continental levels.
