CLEANLINESS IS ONE OF RWANDA'S SECRETS IN TOURISM-APPENTENG

to senior reginald ade for the previous segment he had the opportunity to discuss pertinent issues whether in the the shoulders of our country with the political reps from the ndc and the mpp and of course he elia also did the newspaper segment with uh ichioma after anima coliseum had given us the news we have another interesting segment here uh on the am ghana for you and i believe you are going to enjoy so just stay tight and enjoy the next conversation you are going to have you remember we are in the month of rwanda so we are celebrating the country rwanda we are bringing everything rwanda to you on adora tv you know that reginald again also had an interview with the ambassador or the high commissioner of rwanda in ghana several conversations we have had here as well as randa is concerned and today we are bringing you another interesting one and in fact we are doing it with a very very interesting personality as well she's in the person of anti-stella a painting now if you have ever heard of afstar toss appstar toss has been in this existence since 1994 a very very experienced entity when it comes to tourism as far as the african continent ghana is concerned after thoughts she's the founder of upstart tours and today we are privileged to have her in the studio to discuss rwanda as far as tourism is concerned she has been there and not just been there but she has seen what tourism is in rwanda and she knows what tourism is in ghana so she's the best person to have this interesting discussion with this morning on am ghana so just enjoy the conversation good morning and welcome good morning thank you very much for coming we appreciate your time when you mention tourism people think about traveling traveling traveling traveling traveling how does it feel when i was speaking to matthew matthew said you know auntie stella is a very very experienced um tall um person if you have seen it or as far as tourism is concerned how does it feel when when or what i mean how does it what does it take to even get to that point in the facebook it's a passion you must have passion for travels anything to do with traveling either yourself or receiving yes or trying to market tourism to someone who is a novice okay yes what to say what they should expect because tourism really helps us to expand our scope in life yes yeah that's very interesting um you you have had the opportunity to be in rwanda over the past few years we have seen rwanda in so many colors whenever one that comes up now tourism comes easily i mean if you mention rwanda people are talking about look at kigali there is a certain green something somewhere there is this here there is this so you have been there you you have seen it you have been in it what is the experience as well as tourism in rwanda is concerned the first thing that hits you is the cleanliness as you drive from the airport and even drivers are like law abiding motorbikes everybody has their helmets on okay they may have a passenger but you must have a helmet it's the then the greens everywhere is green i think it's conscious effort having been made to green the city and that is and the cleanliness no uh polishing bags or black bags the water the water bottle we have to make a conscious effort if you want to compare that to ghana yes we want to make it the cleanest city in ghana how will you do it you have to ensure that people are aware just like perhaps years ago in school children school children you are taught don't litter now people literally finish eating they just it's like a normal thing shouldn't keep your litter in your bag in your pocket and they have managed to do that to do that yes and then the use of the land everywhere something is planted it can be i think cassava but nicely done so every section the housing you know the the um residential areas or whatever they have planned a garden a garden maybe something to eat if you don't want flowers plant cassava okra and tend to them that is what amazed me oh wow wow so you can see that it helps with uh sustainability it is sustaining their tourism yeah because he goes there you want to go again and the people are happy that people are also coming to see how clean they you know they've embraced cleanliness we have to experience this ourselves yeah we definitely do but for me i mean just by the little you are telling me now i i i'm getting the feeling i i really want to be there and see experience it myself um this is just festan but then what other opportunities are there um for tourists i want to talk rwanda what is the potential i mean for those who even consider business what are some of the opportunities yeah having met some businessmen you could see that in ghana we have so much they also have a lot but we can send out something like shea butter to them okay because they don't have to share better or if they do maybe from some other country something which they are so much to them for me i took a few samples from my nieces who produce such and it's heartwarming even the oneness received an award in uh rwanda recently wow yes just make sending out the black soup coconut oil oh the way perhaps we package ours is more interesting and so we can share they also have some stuff like um they have this oil the name has just escaped me but when we were at the hotel and some of us couldn't eat the fish without you know hot pepper we asked for him he said oh i cut a cumber or something just a drop on it wow and it's that's it that is it and so while we have our sito here they also have that which we can also make use of perhaps you can say it's like when you make shito the oil the oil is what okay they are using and not the but this is brutally hot and the aroma it gives the the food the different oh okay so these are some of the some of the things which is the fashion we could tell their fashion is different okay we're from ghana we like to show off ourselves yeah so dressmakers perhaps hairdressers these days people are going more natural yeah so you can do the natural hair those who are dream matter ways and that exchange can help us too interesting interesting interesting now when you started you mentioned that what immediately hits you is their cleanliness how clean they have managed to keep their surroundings and the environment now is it one would say i mean these are lessons we could learn from some of these things like you mentioned rightly that um we are also trying to keep our environment clean and we i don't know we are struggling to do that nowhere what lessons can we learn from i mean some of these experiences that we can also bring here and then and make our hours also i mean appealing it's enforcement enforcing the laws are already in the books the books have been closed for years so we need to enforce it tell your neighbor don't drop it there you eat the fun you go you just automatically drop it let us help each other draw the attention of each other we have to do it word of mouth help we shouldn't help ourselves because it's not only or let me say when you go outside accra for instance you find that some of the towns are cleaner than that yes so what how can they keep the place clean and we can't keep our crackling we think it's everybody's business somebody zoom lion is on the way to pick but we need to let them know that well cleanliness is next do it yourself don't wait for zoom liar don't let zoom lion see your nakedness that you're a dirty somebody your environment is dirty prove that you can do it yeah if rwandans are doing it why not we can also do it and in so doing you know we will be able to attract people because as a tour operator sometimes we have to be sort of selective or even selective in words telling our guests that right this is just indigenous something or the end this okay so please if you see this don't okay just more like it's not good enough and so people are selling within the dirty surrounding you're not going to make money and you'll be crying to government to help you no clean your environment okay to be different that every day when you get there you really it's not about the saucepan okay it's about everything people are eating thinking it's just the bones are just make sure you provide something a receptacle to collect the rabbits and your guests you can just put like you have do not touch this tv please help us to keep our environment clean yes i think we can we can do it because traveling outside kigali you see that the women people living along the streets are coming out to sweep okay they are surroundings they have all the greens they have um this is very interesting uh of course the discussion is getting more interesting but um we want to take a quick 10 when we come back um we have more for you here on am gun [Music] so [Music] welcome aboard the safest airline in africa with industry-leading safety measures to protect your well-being the first in africa to earn a diamond standard of safety offering a 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hello everyone my name is emily a proud ambassador for sonotex breast cancer awareness month it's hashtag pinktober hashtag snoop goes pink now from the 1st october to the 31st of october 2021 at any of the three branches of sunotech tema osu and west hills malls we are gathering together to get free screening yes i said it's free and that's not all we have for you we also have twenty percent of mammogram testing and fifty percent of ultrasound let's go ping from october the first to the 31st 2021 at osu tema and west hills mode all sorted branches we are giving hope to save a life see you there [Music] all right welcome back if you just joined us um my guest is uh auntie stella and this de la pentene is the founder for upstart tours very experienced and a very effective tourism of freitas she's been in the system for very very long and we are privileged to speak to her about opportunities as far as tourism is concerned in rwanda now let's also look at we were just you just told us about the lessons and the experiences you have had as far as being there is concerned now let's generally look at the bigger picture where we we look at the partnership as far as tourism is concerned especially between rwanda and ghana you mentioned that there are certain exchanges that you can take advantage of and what i mean how big is this what is the potential in there for for us when both countries decide to concentrate on tourism yes tourism has a lot of value chain okay understand and um we have export promotion yeah whipping up interest in ghana's products we have uh the two operators the tourism operators okay so as a result we had a group coming in to experience ghana and of course to compare it to this and through that forming a greater partnership between the uh operators out there and us here they were here for a week just as we were for one week and i think through interactions yes it was a marathon moving from one yeah yes same as us so glimpses and that gave us the whole idea of coming together sharing we continue to share ideas we continue the ideas will be maybe we can have multi-sec multi-tourism destination okay to package so you need a partner to give you the side of rwanda we merge it and sell such packages okay we're selling it to ourselves first because i believe africans we need to know ourselves we don't know it thanks to covet now we have to make the greater effort um to know our neighbors and then africa so that we can appreciate whatever each country has um in so doing we will be able to sell and people will buy into it yeah and then later on the outside because you know it i've been to yeah rwanda so i can still run that to a foreigner yeah after selling to ganesha onions yes that's very very interesting so these are these are some of the opportunities that exist for us how do we handle this opportunities well i mean do we start from the government agencies i mean where does individuals even come in yeah i think um tourism is not a government thing okay yes government will lead us but we the private sector drives the tourism okay private sector is driven by them and then the government will make sure that enabling environment so once you know hotels are crying for tax reliefs and things like that if government listens then more people will come yeah that they will still get their taxes but not squeeze us at every point to collect a b c d so then it means i said hotelier you are doing you're not making profits and if you're not making profits you may close down you will be owing the tax man and you'll be running away things are done in such a way we have to do work together government and the private sector yeah understanding our business i don't think government understands tourism so much they're talking about the nitty-gritty yeah yes that is what i'm talking about they know the tourism will give us so much yeah revenue yes but how that nitty-gritty is done by the private sector so if private sector have the enabling environment we have we can deal directly with the rwandans to operators or hoteliers so we do business together that's how it you know we will be able to achieve interesting and and by so doing i mean it is quite obvious that we will be adding to the to the economy i mean building the building of the economy because i remember there was this subject of discussion uh a few a few a few uh months let me see a few months ago when it's actually football related when messi moved from spain to france there's actually a football club in france that has visited rwanda on their jersey and then i mean as as a global icon there was a picture of messi that has millions of followers everywhere in this world and he was wearing a jesse and there was nothing behind the jesse but visit rwanda it became a subject of discussion i mean all about the place that can you imagine such a global icon wearing visit rwanda and the impact it will have on the tourism as far as rwanda is concerned last year or two there is another football club us now who has visited rwanda already uh and the little checks i made was that i i found out that the partnership between the country and those football clubs in fact tripled their tourism revenues and they are going yeah they are looking forward to add more clubs and all that so it's quite obvious you see the impact and how it adds to nissan building once you see your revenue in tourism has tripled it is good news it is good how do we as a country also i mean do we just have to learn go to them and see and teach us how you did these things i think um ghana has tried we're trying with we're hoping let me put it this way we thought about it okay we planned it but i think it's the execution we can we can do all these things if we put our mind to it we shouldn't be looking at or loss of living we don't have money because when you start planning and you start with money you are blocked okay because you won't find the money but if you plan it in such a way that yes we start with this we start with black stars or our local people we start with um we have to be talking to the agents of our people out there okay for instance uh somewhere i don't know where he is now and all those people maybe their managers would be kind enough because they are daniel's yes yeah yeah see whether a little something in ghana wow yes attracts i mean that notwithstanding people know the name as some way jan you travel and they say oh ghana yeah and that's just that it needs to move further okay they need to visit don't just watch us on tv come and see what we have okay and we can end we need to know what we have so somewhere for instance should know what we have we have yeah but if he hasn't got the passion for tourism and looking at this is football but then there's football tourism exactly perhaps you have a nice attempt in in ghana than china where he is playing something like that okay if we don't have the nicer theft we have something china hasn't gone which he can just so he's making sure that our people appreciate they have some they they value what we have in ghana we shouldn't belittle ourselves oh there's nothing in ghana that's a lot of people say oh there is nothing because they haven't experienced it okay yes homo is interested yeah do you understand it it has a significance or are you going to say oh hamoi is interesting but it is fetish who told you is fetish we have to search it's not fetish at all it's bringing our own people together together to show love to each other yeah you can sell that just that love i love ghana that's great i love the food yeah that's very interesting now if you look at the other side of it i mean on the continent no ghana is one country rwanda is another country but on the continent you know the level of the continent how do we also come together now there is the after center here in ghana to enhance bilateral trade within the african countries on the continent and all that how do we make sure that on the continental level tourism is coming in to help all of us as africans because you mentioned we sell it to ghana we sell it to the rwandans we sell it to the africans first and then we can go beyond ourselves to the outside world how can we make use of tourism to help the continent of africa perhaps through various tourism fairs african tourism african african you invite all the african countries interested in tourism you can start with your neighbors it can be i think years ago we had inter-tourism but you know ghanaians like music and listen and they forget about the details of it okay so the into tourism maybe you were not born i believe that was more fun and games and eat and drink that's our side of things but once you're eating and you're drinking you can also look people can just have a discussion yeah through that so we are talking about the continent coming together let us develop our own in our own context affair okay so that nigeria will be here code devoir is there you can be when you start small then you expand kenya will come in rwanda will come to exhibit here yeah the following year we moved to another country yes to do the same exhibition so that the people can be drawn to to come to the country concerned but in doing this um i told you earlier that we start with oh it's expensive yeah so then we are blocked very true so we need to be working with the airlines unfortunately africa we don't have we don't have a lot of them yes so but we have something yeah what stops africans coming together egypt is there one day is there kenya european air kenyan let's sit down you have what it takes let's help each other you have something i have something exactly how do we strike the balance so that we will not set helpless we sit there and we think oh my god we want to do this but we don't have money but if we put our acts together we'll be able to bring people in not just to ghana to other country but of course we have to start here because the headquarters is bringing everybody else so as you are bringing them say fly by run there yeah fly kenya yeah fly through yeah fly south african air uh and all the others and when they come in they know that we have car rental association in ghana they will come together and think about the rate exactly because we are going to be catering for our i think it's not the word or but um it should be affordable yeah it should be affordable understood understood uh quickly um with a focus on rwanda you have been there i mean did you get any i mean sense or feeling how they have been able to address these few challenges that also comes as far as tourism is concerned so that perhaps as a country we can also take a key form and challenges like as far as tourism is concerned where you mentioned one that we have to be reasonable with ourselves for instance hoteliers the toe operators come together and say you know what we want to improve the sector of ours so maybe we go to government government decrease or take off some fuel taxes for us and then i mean is that all they do or there are some others that we can also learn from um well so it then it comes to domestic tourism okay let your people understand why they're in business it's not to make money right now okay but then that's very important to to have a range in five years don't think oh bye bye christmas i have to i must have to make this right so you spread your your plan your strategy so we need to know the country okay and get make sure that the chain everybody is involved everybody understands that let's not increase our rates because we have a nigerian brother coming in oh and you you want to encourage them to come back tomorrow actually so make it reasonable they go and even recommend for other people to come the same way so we're going to rwanda so rwanda gave us a very affordable rate which we enjoyed yeah i'm sure they'll be able to do it again yeah so um the accommodation i'm sure also did partly was born by you know the embassy yeah yes and the hotels that's encouraging very encouraging because they wanted us to come and see what they have and of course when they were coming we had to reciprocate yeah understood understood uh the the the the award faced covet sometimes i believe it also affected tourism generally how how how west and then how did you manage to to i mean go around this all right so kobe came when we were not aware you know so taken aback everybody because it wasn't part of a plan and either two we were looking i'm a ground handler i'm talking from my perspective now so i expect the people to come from elsewhere yeah i'm a ground handler but i also do i'm not selling myself i also do domestic tourism so you can be working with your churches because you want to encourage people to know what we have to appreciate um as soon as it came everything of course locked down how are you going to end the living with that so government ghana government that is ghana tourism authority yeah called the meeting we brainstormed and we took a decision that the best thing to do is to start thinking strategically okay domestic tourism yeah so you see that bus that's just going around yeah he was born out of this because we realize that whilst you're waiting this is an opportunity we shouldn't throw away this is the time to to know your neighbor in in ghana in ghana either to you you go to kumasi for a funeral you go and sit there and of course eat and come back you don't even think about or perhaps i can do something yes you went for a funeral but part of that should be to tour your immediate surroundings yes perhaps go to the museum which museum go to the military museum perhaps go to lake busan tree just to look at it and come back quickly and then if you're not driving join your bus exactly but if you're driving you can yeah you can have to do that there are so many opportunities that covet brought to us and which we need to continue to build on um i know people have built on it and it's working we we there are more there are more to ask and find out from you but unfortunately uh we will have to risk a lot of time again we have to really catch up with you find more time and then do this and and get the experience so we are very grateful for time and uh i mean coming around or in your busy shadow kind of leaving some and then coming here we really appreciate that thanks to you very much and thank you for watching as well thanks for sponsors venna we are in the month of october the breast cancer month we are reminding ourselves go to suny tech and let them help you out with all your concerns they will definitely be able to help you my name is samokuya attention production thanks to everybody thanks to rwanda high commission and the rwand air and of course app star toss up star toast for uh making this discussion um very successful my name is samuel fusilla i will come your way once again with more on rwanda within this one so kindly stay tuned bye 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2021-10-26 14:13

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