Lessons From Ethiopia's Post-War Tourism Recovery

25.08.2023 - 14:17 / skift.com / Dawit Habtemariam / Africa

Ethiopia’s tourism sector has been hit hard in the last two years by Covid and a brutal civil war, with spending down by more than $2 billion. The tourist sites and infrastructure have been spared, but the sector doesn’t have the confidence of governments, travelers and tour group operators that the conflict is over and the country is a safe destination.

For two years, Ethiopia has had an ethnic civil war largely fought between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea. It started in November 2020 when the Ethiopian government sent troops into the northern Tigray region after prime minister Abiy Ahmed accused the TPLF of attacking a military base. The war was mostly concentrated in Tigray but did spill into parts of other regions like Amhara. 

The conflict may have led to over 600,000 lives lost, according to the Financial Times. Millions of people have been displaced. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights have accused Tigrayan forces of committing war crimes and “human rights abuses” and the Ethiopian government of committing “crimes against humanity.“

In November, the Tigrayan rebels and the Ethiopian government signed a peace deal to end hostilities.

Before the horrific war and the pandemic, the country drew over 800,000 tourists and spending amounted to $3.5 billion in 2019, according to the World Bank. A growing segment of tourists have been from the U.S., UK and Europe, according to Intrepid Travel East African General Manager Samuel Karani.

Popularity was rising so much that some of the country’s beautiful natural parks, churches, mountains and historic sites experienced overtourism. Visitation to the Gheralta mountains, for example, was becoming popular to the point that some of the historic churches experienced overcrowding, according to Mark Chapman, founder of Tesfa Tours, which has operated in Ethiopia since 2010.

In 2020, visitation dropped to 500,000 and spending fell by 35 percent to $2.28 billion, according to the World Bank. In the last two years, the country lost $2 billion thanks to the war and Covid, Ethiopia Tourism State Minister Sileshi Girma told Voice of America.

“A lot of tour operators stopped operating because nobody was earning any money,” said Chapman. “It was hard to survive these few years and keep paying overhead.”

The war prolonged any hopes of the return of tour groups since Covid. In March 2022, Intrepid Travel decided to hold off on offering tours even though traveler interest had resumed. Their tourist destinations and routes they used were “unready” and the war hadn’t settled down, said Karani.

Tourist sites and attractions are typically not spared in conflicts. The historic architecture of Aleppo suffered