Uganda Tourism Board CEO, Lilly Ajarova has asked the country’s foreign missions to help sell the country as the best MICE(Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibition) destination in Africa.
Speaking during the joint regional economic and commercial diplomacy retreat for heads of Uganda’s foreign missions, at Serena Hotel Kigo, in Wakiso district, Ajarova said the country has made great strides in positioning itself as the best destination for international meetings and conferences.
“Since the Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife, and Antiquities launched our strategy in 2018, we have made significant progress. We have risen from an unknown destination to become the 10th best destination on the continent for MICE, which is a remarkable achievement. Despite the challenges posed by COVID, in 2020, we moved up to the sixth position in 2022, and currently, we rank seventh. Our goal is to become one of the top five destinations on the continent, and we are working tirelessly to achieve this,” Ajarova aid.
“The recent addition of the Speke Resort and Convention Center has addressed our previous limitation of hosting large conferences. We now have the capacity to host 10,000 delegates in one place, and our hotels are benefiting from the spread of visitors. This infrastructure development has enhanced our competitiveness as a destination, and we are confident that it will attract more travelers to our country.”
Ajarova said this information ought to be given out to various organisers of these international meetings and conferences so they can choose Uganda as the best destination .
“We count on our foreign missions to help us achieve this goal by identifying opportunities, lobbying for Uganda to host international meetings, and supporting our Explore Uganda destination brand. We believe that with their support, we can achieve our vision of making Uganda a top destination in Africa.”
“Our missions abroad are in the market so they know what is happening there. They have the networks. I will give you an example of our embassy in Paris, in France, and the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. So the mission can help us to know what kind of meetings are being organized so that they can be able to recommend and lobby for Uganda to host such meetings,” Ajarova said.
The head of regional economic cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the retreat is meant to help realign the heads of missions for Uganda.
“We decided to come up with a framework under which we can guide our missions abroad to market the country three main areas including increasing our exports, attractive foreign direct investments and attracting tourists. We decided that as a ministry, we needed to being our envoys and diplomats abroad who deal with economic affairs to give them key performance indicators on how they can achieve results in these three areas,” Kabonero said.
“We have started with 10 missions and two consulates and these are in areas where we think Uganda is likely to attract investment in agriculture and agro industrilaisation, tourism, mineral development and science, science, technology and innovation .We shall measure the results and then scale up to all the other 37 missions that Uganda has abroad,” Kanonero said.
