SOUMANOU SEIBOU TOLEBAMinister of Tourism and Craft Industries
On the Independence Day, the 1st of August 2006, President has named the tourism beside the agriculture. That was a strong sign coming from the high State Authority. Therefore, it's our duty to do our best for praising Benin inside as well as outside, in order to attract many tourists. Currently, we have 170,000 visitors per year. To achieve our ambition, we should improve hotel infrastructures, quality of reception, and work on a more attractive program using decentralized bases and trying to assess the potentialities of each commune, each department.
Naturally, we should lay all the work on cultural tourism, sea tourism with the fishing road and the echo tourism. We'll focus the development of our tourism on many elements, namely, the wonderful parks of W and of Pendjari in the North of Benin.
As for the cultural tourism, we're thinking to those living in Haïti and USA who would like to know their sources. So, we'll develop the tourism through kings' palaces, in Ouidah for those interested. We're also developing the religious tourism. With all that mentioned above, we're sure of the increasing of visits in our country. Nevertheless we are facing the problem of air tickets cost. However, we're dealing with airline companies for the reduction of the cost so that tourists can massively come to Benin.
Beyond all those branches, there is internal tourism. Private societies, public sectors should organize touristic travels towards the inner country for Benineses' visits. Students and pupils we'll be interested too. For that purpose, we'll conceive a certain number of projects that we'll start from echo tourism to the purchase of own buses, air conditioned, for a safe journey of people. We're working to that jointly with private operators and we're sure of the success thanks to them. Politic will is real, we have the support of the Chief of the State, of the government and what we have to do is to facilitate access to financial institutions for privates so that they can invest in hotel business.
The firm will of the President of leading Benin towards the progress will help the building of presidential residences. That will therefore, lead to the organization of tourism congress. It's very important that organized meetings take place here, to get the agro-food moving, and deal with transport issues, especially the employment of our drivers.
So, we want to transform our country in a meeting center in order to hold international meetings such as the African Union. That's our projects for the next years.
We've written a certain number of things in the tourism projects among the big works of the country. Roads, bridges, big sites should be improved. There is not only a pure and a hard tourism. We should think about the improvement of airlines, land and sea transport. Beside, we have the flying boats project that the Chief of State had introduced in order to better our sea sides but also allow people and tourists move easily from a point to another inside the country. For that aim, we have a cleaning out project for our riversides.
Inhabitants should clean out the riversides to allow the development of the places for the tourism purpose.As for the seaside resorts, we're studying the technologies to delimitate some areas where people can safely bath or swim because it's dangerous to wash oneself in the sea. Otherwise we have some of the most wonderful beaches in the world.
Concerning the big projects, we planned the building of roads, sanitization of the environment, making potable water, electricity and phone distribution. What is important by now is that the government is studying the way to compensate the landowners for them to clean out and give space to the government. A governmental seminary will be held in a few time and we believe that the problem will find its solution. From there on, we could move forward thanks to investors who are already waiting to finance those works. We plan to associate the former seaside populations to the works. In other words, we want to built a five-star structure and, in the same time, create an environment which integrates those people. So, we can state that we're implementing there a rural development and seaside resorts. Of course, a clean seaside resort under the coconut trees you've seen.
Interview excerpt taken from New York Times Interview
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