By Mavis Paintsil, Accra
The Ghana Tourism Authority has begun stakeholder engagements to develop a policy framework that integrates animal welfare into Ghana’s tourism experience as part of its Destination Sustainability Plans.
Director for Product Development and Investment at the GTA, Alexander Kwame Nketia, said the initiative is being undertaken in collaboration with World Animal Protection and will cover four stakeholder engagements across the country, with the first held today.
According to him, the entire Ghanaian landscape constitutes a tourism resource and every encounter a visitor has — from the airport to the taxi to their destination forms part of the tourism experience.
“People come to Ghana and they don’t see Ghana only as our castles and forts and other attractions. The entire landscape constitutes our resource that we sell to our markets,” he said.
He explained that with growing global consciousness about animal rights, tourists are increasingly concerned about how animals are treated in destinations they visit. Ghana, he said, must align with responsible and sustainable tourism practices.
“One of the things is also how most of these tourists who are animal rights conscious are seeing other parts of the world where animals are being treated fairly or unfairly. And so we have also decided that as part of our DSG plans towards responsible tourism, responsible sustainable tourism management, we should begin to look at how we also treat and handle animals in the tourism space,” Mr. Nketia said.
He said the current meetings are to deliberate on draft proposals put together by the GTA and World Animal Protection, and to solicit inputs from industry players, including real estate and hospitality investors.
“These are draft proposals that we put together between GTA and World Animal Protection that we are meeting stakeholders in industry to deliberate on, to input in and to expose them to what ideas we have. Whatever inputs they give we’ll put it in to enhance and strengthen the policy,” he noted.
He stressed that the policy must be tested for local acceptability.
“We need to test what it is like. whether the idea of World Animal Protection is even acceptable by the Ghanaian. We are testing the ground to see how things work,” he said.
Mr. Nketia said three more consultations are scheduled, with one next week, and all engagements are expected to end by the end of this month. After that, the Authority will review all inputs, reconvene stakeholders, and build consensus before escalating the draft from policy level to regulatory implementation.
“Once we all come to a certain level of consensus, we then know what next steps to do,” he said.
