Cairo: Egypt is confident of luring back millions of foreign visitors and putting a smile on their faces, according to its new tourism minister, despite heavy first quarter losses and setbacks including a bomb that brought down a Russian passenger plane.
Yehia Rashid said the ancient land of the pyramids and Red Sea resorts was determined to secure a strong recovery even though the number of foreign tourists fell by 40 per cent in the first quarter of 2016, compared with the same period last year.
The most populous Arab nation aims to attract 12 million tourists by the end of 2017 with a six-point plan, he said.
“I am very hopeful, optimistic about the future of tourism into Egypt,” Rashid told Reuters in an interview. “I want to get that smile that you are smiling into the faces of everybody. We want to stay positive.” Egypt tourism revenue has taken a heavy hit since a Russian plane crashed in the Sinai last October, killing all 224 people on board in what President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi called an act of terrorism. Daesh said it planted a bomb on board.
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Who Tweets Most In Africa And What Do They Talk About?
Egypt was the most active African nation on Twitter in 2015, with 450 million tweets, according to a report released on April 6, 2016 by Portland Communications, an integrated company based in London, United Kingdom.
This came barely five years after the micro-blogging site was blocked in the North-African nation in 2011, after Egyptians took to the streets during the Arab Spring that started in neighboring Tunisia.
According to Mail & Guardian Africa, the report, ‘How Africa Tweets’, is published annually and it analyses Twitter trends, hashtags and online habits in African countries.
It put Nigeria in second place with 350 million tweets, South Africa (325 million), Kenya (76 million) and Ghana with 65 million tweets.
Africans used the online social platform to pre-dominantly talk about politics.
The report showed that 10 percent of the total tweets in Africa were about politics, more than the United States and United Kingdom where political conversations only made up one to two percent of hashtags in 2015.
Since 2012, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Ethiopia and Burundi led in political conversations on Twitter. These nations have experienced increased political activity since 2011 the Arab revolution hit Egypt, while Nigeria, Burundi and Ethiopia had their presidential elections.
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African Passport By 2018
NAMIBIA and other African states are considering the possibility of a common passport for the continent by 2018.
This is one of the decisions deliberated by senior officials at the recently-ended four-day Ministerial Conference on Aviation Security and Facilitation held in Windhoek last week.
The permanent secretary in the ministry of works and transport Willem Goeieman said during a high-level meeting with Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila and aviation experts on Friday that the target was part of Agenda 2063 which was already adopted last year.
The target basically deals with some of the decisions that have [already]been taken by the African Union in terms of Agenda 2063 – that is for the common passports to be issued to Africans in 2018, as well as the removal of visas that was approved by the honourable ministers, he stated.
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Around Africa This Past Week (10/04/2016)
In a case akin to a horror film storyline, a headless child was born this week in Zimbabwe’s Masvingo General Hospital.
Uganda’s only radiotherapy machine breaks down
Uganda’s only radiotherapy machine used for treating cancer is broken beyond repair. Mulago Hospital, the country’s main is now looking for $1.8 million to buy a new machine as thousands of patients have been left in the cold. The machine in Uganda was donated in 1995 and had been successfully repaired in the past. This time efforts to fix it failed. The unit is said to receive 44,000 new referrals from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi as well as South Sudan. Almost 75 percent of these people need radiotherapy. Radiotherapy treatment targets and kills cancerous cells in a specific part of the body using radiation.
Congo Brazzaville Opposition leader, Jean-Marie Mokoko running scared
Egypt has high hopes for tourism despite grim statistics, setbacks
Yehia Rashid said the ancient land of the pyramids and Red Sea resorts was determined to secure a strong recovery even though the number of foreign tourists fell by 40 per cent in the first quarter of 2016, compared with the same period last year.
The most populous Arab nation aims to attract 12 million tourists by the end of 2017 with a six-point plan, he said.
“I am very hopeful, optimistic about the future of tourism into Egypt,” Rashid told Reuters in an interview. “I want to get that smile that you are smiling into the faces of everybody. We want to stay positive.” Egypt tourism revenue has taken a heavy hit since a Russian plane crashed in the Sinai last October, killing all 224 people on board in what President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi called an act of terrorism. Daesh said it planted a bomb on board.
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