Victoria Falls cleans up ahead of UN tourism forum

BY BAYANDA NKATHA

Various stakeholders in Victoria Falls took to the streets on Thursday morning to clean up the city’s environs in preparation for the United Nations Tourism (UN Tourism) Regional Forum on Gastronomy for Africa, which starts on Friday.

The forum will be officially opened by President Mnangagwa at the Elephant Hills Resort Golf Course.

The clean-up initiative was mobilized by the Victoria Falls City Council in partnership with the Environmental Management Agency, and involved participation from tourism operators such as Shearwater, Elephant Hills, Rainbow, and Azambezi, as well as government departments like Immigration, Zimra, and the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority.

The Pristine Victoria Falls Society, Greenline Africa, and scores of young people under the banner of Youth in Tourism also joined in.

The clean-up effort aimed to present Victoria Falls as a pristine tourism destination, with young people picking up litter from the town to the airport, while other stakeholders cleaned around the city.

Delegates have already started arriving for the event, which is expected to attract 10,000 people on its official opening day.

The forum focuses on gastronomy tourism, which involves product diversification and the use of traditional foods and indigenous knowledge systems as a tourism attraction.

This is a priority for the Africa agenda, as prepared by member states for brand Africa. Zimbabwe was chosen to host the forum in recognition of First Lady Auxilia Mnangagwa’s efforts to promote gastronomy tourism from the grassroots.