She is Sierra Leone Minister of Tourism and Culture, Dr. Memunatu Pratt who has made the country proud for winning a medley of international accolades, as champion of tourism, changing the narrative in Africa and building global synergy around the promotion of the interconnected hospitality and the cultural sector. She inherited a very low key ministry but has injected dynamism in show of strong leadership in her official assignment to lay a very solid foundation for a promising future that is pregnant with opportunities. A-Z Africa Magazine has been privileged to hear from Dr. Memunatu Pratt to glean her experience on pertinent issues she has been engaged with; and hopes to pursue in the mid and long term
A-Z: What has been your high and low point in the discharge of your responsibility since assuming office?
Dr. Pratt: It is always exciting and a pleasure to be interviewed especially by a very excellent magazine. I have looked at the cover page, you are doing a very good job for the people of Sierra Leone. I was appointed as Minister of Tourism in 2018 and as I assumed office, I inherited a ministry that was very low rated where even people who worked in office did not have the kind of clout that this industry goes by. So when I came onboard, I had this opportunity to turnaround one of the most important sectors in Sierra Leone which before the war was extremely doing well and then by the time we had the war and then with all the different catastrophes we have had, the industry completely lost its focus. So my low point was when I became the minister and inherited this very difficult sector wherein it was totally left behind. It was like operating in isolation. There was no connection between the ministry and quite a number of sectors; so it was in pariah and that was my lowest point when I came. My highest point now is that so much has gone home. Of course we have worked on the branding of Sierra Leone, changing the image of Sierra Leone. No more when you just hear about Sierra Leone, you think of blood diamonds or maybe you think about the civil war. But today, when you talk about Sierra Leone, you are able to go on the internet and see Sierra Leone’s potentials in terms of tourism. We have increase tourists arrival, we also motivated and inspired Sierra Leoneans to believe in tourism. Things like domestic tourism. So that is my highest point. Meanwhile, at the international level, it self-evident- I am now even representing Africa in some of the international global forums. Another highest point is the interest which Sierra Leoneans have taken into the tourism sector. Today, you see quite a lot of activities and the manner in which even the political class and will of the leadership of the president. I mean we go with him to different places across the country. I think those are all important things. So the highest will be our international engagement around the globe.
A-Z: What is the scope and breadth of your function?
Dr. Pratt: Oh! My scope is wide, because we all know that tourism borders on many different disciplines. It is highly interconnected and highly multifaceted and multi-sectoral. So my scope of work is of course, to ensure that we develop the tourism sector, increase tourists arrival, provide the level of capacity where local goods can be marketed across the world; and then also, to look at tourism education and looking at how we develop the infrastructures for the sector. So it is open ended because it is related to many areas like I said. It has the implication for Sierra Leone image for business and development, it has the implication for things like the environment, climate change, it brings implication for public education, job creation, development of entrepreneurship and then also how do we transform rural communities using tourism as a vector root. It has a lot to do with culture. Culture is very critical to the lives of people. It is our responsibility to ensure that we develop high level capacity for Sierra Leoneans to understand their culture, to believe in their culture, to practice their culture and show appreciation for what they are. I think these are all the things within our scope. So it is big, it is multifaceted, and then it survives on quite a number of other sectors in the economy
A-Z How are you positioning the ministry in the post COVID 19 context to be like the low hanging fruits in creating opportunities?
Dr. Pratt: Well of course, we all know that COVID 19 affected the international and domestic tourisms and it affected us globally. When you listen to the news, you see now the rest of the world is crying as a result of the fact that businesses are gradually closing and people are losing their jobs. But for us, we looked at it from two major perspectives. One, in terms of how do we contribute to ensuring that we deal with the COVID 19 appropriately. We participated in a number of activities. Government provided safety lens for the sector wherein we were able to lift quite a number of workers, augmenting their salaries. We did this in terms of positioning Sierra Leone tourism at the domestic level now, because we would be able to do a lot of work around that. We have been able to easily catapult ourselves into the international tourism development as quickly as possible.
A-Z Like you say, catapulting Sierra Leone to the international level can you give some specifics of the various engagements?
Dr. Pratt: Well I cannot give you the latest. One of the things which we do is to attend international tourism market around the world. When I became minister, I took Sierra Leone to more than twelve new destinations. Twelve different market places… So the latest is the World Travel Market in London which we just came back from. The event brings over two hundred countries together to go and exhibit what their countries can offer in return. So at that conference of course I was the person who sat on the global meeting, the global forum for tourism ministers and I was the speaker for Africa. This is just the latest. And quite recently about two months ago, I was given the Africa tourism award as a founding member of the Africa Tourism Board and as a champion of tourism in Africa and I have won quite a number of these awards. Even at other levels, not only the world travel market in the UK. When we talk about the ITB in Berlin. In 2020 I was also the recipient of the International Tourism Award that was put together by a number of international actors. So these are the things that clearly show that it is not only about the fact that am living in Sierra Leone but I am changing the narratives of our participation as far as tourism is concerned at the global level.
A-Z: Can you put issues into perspectives in terms of mid and long term plans of taking tourism and culture to another level?
Dr. Pratt: Well, the government is supporting the ministry in terms of complementing counterpart funding to donor funded project. As we have now, we are beneficiary of the World Bank Grant Project which is helping in many areas of infrastructures, development of science, training and capacity building, developing certain policies, hiring of tourism advisors to help us in capacity building, developing of our international marketing strategy, doing our master plans. So a lot of works is going on in this industry. We also have another one which is the NAS integration framework. Currently if you go to the hotel and tourism centre, you see construction going on. So it is the Ministry of Tourism that is rebuilding that hotel and tourism spot. We are in the process of developing an integrated curriculum that will serve as a guide for teaching and learning of hospitality of tourism in the country. So there are also a number of activities in terms of capacity building. We have fully engaged in the Climate Change Board supported by the UNDP, we train women across schools and communities, we train young people in terms of recycling waste management. We are very much now in the process of working with one project from the World Bank to ensure that we make our environment plastic free and give people alternative livelihoods. So a lots of things are going on. We are also working with UNESCO. UNESCO supporting the cultural sector. Assessment has been done and certain activities and training have gone on and then of course we are working on some aspect of activities that have to do with enterprise development, skills development and job creation. So a lots of things are underway and on course
A-Z: What are the factors that are limiting your interventions and plans?
Dr. Pratt: Well, I can tell you first it is resources and that is key. Over the years we were having institutional challenges. But that has been improved upon greatly because we are now in a member of a number of inter-ministerial committees. So we are now working together. So those limitations we are dealing with because we have already established our governance and financial strategy policy and then we have done our E-governance policy our E-tourism policy and then we have also now developed the new Act, the new National Tourism Act. There was no integrated embedded Act that can speak to all the new development in this sector. So we are developing one and making sure that it stands a test of time.
A-Z What Projections can you about enhanced results in tourist arrivals in this post COVID 19 context?
Dr. Pratt: For instance let us talk about tourists arrival, we have a projection two hundred thousand tourists by mid next year and of course we all know that we hosted the Budapest Bamako Rally finish line, we are also going to host next year and we expecting about two thousand Europeans coming to Sierra Leone. Now when it comes to GDP, we know they have done in the projection that by end of next year we would have increased our contribution which was 4.1 and then it went down almost to two because of the COVID 19 but we would surpassed that by the end of next year and then also in terms of employment, we see prospect to have a very large number of people for employment something like eight thousand. So now the employment depends on the tourism sector this is those that are working in the hotels not those who are in the small businesses. We are looking at it to rise to two five thousand by the end of next year. We also have to consider that we have other related areas in the tourism sector like the airline industry, hospitality industry, hotel operators, SME and all of that. So if you take it into consideration, a large number of people that would be empowered by the end of next year.
A-Z: You talk about interconnections in the sector, so how the other actors that are lend to the sector playing the part?
Dr. Pratt: Well I know I inherited a challenging relationship but now they are playing their part. In fact, currently we are working on the tourism and wildlife policy. We will be dealing with the Ministry of Environment and also working with climate change. So we work with those ministries and it depends on the case-by-case basis and then we also work with NGOs, we are also working with conservation society for Sierra Leone because we want to put a program wherein we can develop our national parks to make it very tourists friendly. The last time we had paramount chiefs conference which was supported by the World Bank, we also work with the Ministry of Local Government. So this is the way we work. When we have education programs, we work with the Ministry of Technical and Higher Education and ensure that we get back their support. We also work with the Ministry of Trade on the EIF this project I spoke about and then of course the Ministry of Development on projects we want them to support. So tourism does not stand on its own. If we do not have a strong collaboration, we cannot run the sector. Now we are working with Sierra Leone Road Authority. Hopefully they will be constructing 21 access roads for us in the country. We are working with Energy Ministry, our energy project helps to support the tourism sector even the water and sanitation project because it has to deal with how to access Sierra Leone so we have a strong relationships with all of them and the responses have been so good at least for the past two years. What I would add is that our interactions with the media and the media campaign. We come very close to the media so what everything you do, you just need to use the media if not it would become very difficult to have desired results. And them also we have challenging regarding to human resource capacity, trained people. There are limited number of people that are trained so we would also do our best in providing train because studies have been done already. And then also we are looking at women in the tourism sector because women constitute over sixty percent of the work force. How we bring them up in the tourism sector so they would become managers along and then we are also looking at: how do we train people in the other areas because we also have other sectors like the creativity practical sector, we are looking at the entertainment industry, cultural industry. So there are a number of things which we are working on and I should say this is a work in progress and so much has happened. We have strong relationship with diplomatic embassies and missions. So things are shaping up. It cannot be done in a day; but we are moving on with education.