The African Union Ministers responsible for Tourism and members of the Bureau for the Specialized Technical Committee (STC) on Transport, Infrastructure, Intercontinental and Interregional Infrastructure, Energy and Tourism (STC-TTIIET) held a meeting by Videoconference today 21^st April 2020 on the invitation of H.E Dr Amani Abou-Zeid, Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy at African Union Commission.

The main objective of this meeting was to discuss the urgent actions to support the continental strategy on COVID-19 pandemic as a way to implement the recommendations of the AU Heads of State and Government held on 3^rd April 2020 by Video Conference. The second objective was to discuss the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic to the tourism sector and propose mitigation measures.

The African Union Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy, H.E. Dr. Amani Abou-Zeid expressed her gratitude to the Hon. Ministers for honouring the invitation and further highlighted the negative economic impacts of COVID-19 to African tourism including the important losses of jobs related to tourism services, grounding of aircrafts and closure of airports and air transport related services and complete shutdown of important public transport services. She appealed to the Hon.Ministers to propose relief measures to help the industry recover immediately once the COVID-19 pandemic is contained

The bureau strongly underscored that the COVID-19 pandemic challenges our continent to deploy rapid, strong and lasting responses to create a strong African Tourism Industry

The Bureau reaffirmed their resolution to operationalize the African Tourism Strategic Framework and requested the Commission to take appropriate action to that effect. 

The Ministers responsible for Tourism thanked the African Union Commission and its partners for the on-going work to contain the COVID-19 pandemic and committed to support the on-going activities in close collaboration with all the stakeholders.