Economics & Currency
Debt, currency, fiscal policy and IMF programmes — and how each reshapes the unit economics of African tourism enterprises and destination receipts. The Corridor Index measures the proportion of tourism receipts that stay within national accounts versus the proportion that exits through foreign ownership, imported supply chains and offshore intermediaries.
Africa's largest tourism market already exists. Our foreign-exchange metrics can't see it.
Roughly four in five of the world's tourists travel within their own region. In Africa the official figure is far lower, and the gap is treated as a market not yet built. The opposite is true: the market exists at scale, and it is the measurement that has not been built. Africa's largest body of travellers are its own people crossing its own borders to trade and visit family, spending in local currency through informal channels the tourism statistics were never designed to count. The instruments were calibrated for the visitor who arrives with hard currency.
Read the analysis →Read by tourism ministries, hotel investors and the analysts who advise them.
Every Monday morning, one analytical brief on the intersection of African tourism and global political economy. Free.
Subscribe — every Monday