By Ahmed Farah, Executive Director, East African Business Council (EABC)
We ask the world to see us as one destination, then make visitors experience eight systems. A traveller can link the Maasai Mara, Serengeti, gorilla trekking in Uganda or Rwanda, Zanzibar and a Kigali conference. On paper, few circuits are stronger. In practice, it remains costly, slow and full of avoidable friction.
The numbers are encouraging, but not comforting. The EAC recorded about 8.5 million international arrivals in 2024, against 7.7 million in 2019, roughly 110% of the pre-pandemic level. Receipts reached US$7.7 billion in 2023. Before COVID-19, the EAC Tourism Marketing Strategy placed tourism at 9.5% of GDP and 7.1% of employment across Partner States. Recovery matters, but competitiveness means visitors move easily, spend more, stay longer, and return. We are not there.
The barrier is not our parks, beaches, cities or culture. It is movement. A short flight between East African capitals can cost more than one to the Gulf or Europe. Routes are thin, frequencies limited, charges heavy. Bilateral air service agreements defend old habits. The Single African Air Transport Market exists, but too much remains in paper.
We cannot sell East Africa as one destination while treating air connectivity as a national afterthought. Visitors do not care which ministry owns the delay. Tour operators cannot sell circuits priced like a luxury penalty. East African families will not travel if airfare consumes the holiday. We are leaving money on the runway. Air transport is tourism policy, trade policy, jobs policy, and a driver of regional integration, delivered with a boarding pass.
The private sector has said this for years. Hotels, tour operators, airlines, conference organisers, guides, restaurants, transport firms and creative businesses depend on movement. When it is costly, the chain loses. When it is easy, gains spread. More routes create more packages. Competition lowers prices. Better pricing builds regional and domestic travel. East Africans must become a serious tourism market.
Regulation is the other quiet barrier. The EAC Common Market promises free movement of services, labour and persons, but tourism still feels the gap between treaty language and border practice. A tour operator licensed in one Partner State should not start again at every border. Guides should not be strangers next door. Investors should not need a different playbook for the same regional product.
The East African Tourist Visa proves joint action can work, but it is too narrow. Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda have shown the model. Expand it to all EAC Partner States, digitise it properly, and link it to regional packages. A visitor should be able to plan one trip, pay once, move legally, and cross borders, as our treaty promises to ease.
Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, the DRC and Somalia have distinct tourism identities. They should keep them. But the market is crowded. Alone, each country fights for attention. Together, East Africa can sell something larger: wildlife, coast, culture, food, music, mountains, lakes, cities, conferences, heritage, sports and adventure in one journey.
AFCON 2027 will test whether we believe our speeches. Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda will host Africa. It can be a transport headache or a rehearsal for a new regional travel system. If we wait until stadiums are full to fix visas, routes, borders, marketing, standards and visitor information, we will have missed the point.
The reforms are not mysterious. Liberalise intra-EAC air routes. Cut excessive passenger taxes and airport charges. Harmonise tourism licensing and professional standards. Expand the Tourist Visa. Build joint digital platforms for itineraries, payments, data and visitor support. Fund a serious regional brand, not a one-off conference. Bring the private sector into implementation, not just consultation.
Tourism is where citizens, investors and visitors can feel whether integration is real. A border delay is a missed hotel night, a cancelled excursion, a guide without work, a restaurant without customers, an empty airline seat.
The world is ready to buy East Africa as one destination. But it will not integrate us, nor will it lower fares, harmonise rules, or connect our skies. We already have the assets, the demand, and the necessary policies. East Africa cannot continue to market itself as one destination while flying, regulating, and operating as eight separate systems. The future will not arrive by branding. It will arrive when a traveller can move through this region as easily as the story moves in our brochures.
