President of La Campagne Tropicana Beach Resort and Founder of the IPADA Initiative, Olawanle Akinboboye, says Africa needs unity to promote tourism in the continent, adding that preparations are ongoing for this year’s IPADA Initiative celebration. Charles Ajunwa brings excerpts

What is the vision behind IPADA Initiative?

We must on a regular basis ask ourselves pertinent questions like why is the wealthiest continent in the world with 30.3 million square kilometres of area and 1.5 billion rich in natural resources and at the same time we are regarded as the poorest? I believe the biggest problem we have as a continent is that we have not found a formula for us to come together as one unit in the continent of Africa. It’s a father with 55 children and not one of them is actually claiming him because it’s always been Nigeria for Nigeria, Togo for Togo, South Africa for South Africa, Kenya for Kenya. Tourism requires strategic alliance. For tourism to thrive, you cannot be the lone ranger. You can’t be the only one in the wilderness. You must bring together different advantages that you have and showcase it to the world and use it to attract the world, and become a destination. Not just a consortium of attractions, attractions don’t generate economic trickle-down effects. Attractions attract people. You must transform those attractions to a destination before people will come and spend their money in the destination you’ve created. That will have a place to sleep, place to eat, place to recreate weaved around that particular attraction.

If you combine all the natural attractiveness we have in this continent of Africa, from North Africa, to East Africa, West to Central Africa, all the other continents put together cannot compete with us. There is really nothing they have that we don’t have and more. Are you talking about snow? We have plenty of locations, go to Lesotho, South Africa. If you want the best of the best of reefs in the Atlantic Ocean, you find those scuba dive.If you’re interested in beach, Lagos alone, Nigeria, has 854.4 kilometres of beachfront. Just Nigeria alone.  If you combine all these resources that we have on the continent as one unit, put the entire Africa in one single cup and serve it to the world, nobody can compete with us. And that was what Europe did, they created the unified Europe by issuing what they call a Schengen visa. Once you get a Schengen visa, you can visit all over, any part of Europe. Google it, you find out that Europe did 747 million visitors in 2024. They are just about 10.1 million square kilometres of area. They have maximum four months of good weather. What Africa needs to do is to come together as one unit present Africa on a platter and create a gateway through which people of African descent, lovers of Africa can connect with the continent seamlessly. In Nigeria, we have approximately 677 or 766,000 square kilometres of area and over 250 million people.

We believe that we are in the right position, the biggest economy, $500 billion GDP. We are targeting $1 trillion GDP now. We believe that if you combine all these, and call for people to connect with the continent, all the activities happening in North Africa, South, East, West, Central Africa, come through Nigeria. Two locations will be the entry point; Lagos come through Nigeria to any part of Africa. We have the deepest seaport, at Lekki port. Let them land in Lekki and from there, they go to the airport to any part of Africa they want to go to. We’re the big brother, let’s start acting like one. That’s the idea of IPADA Initiative, and this return is to happen on a daily basis. So we have a programme laid out for the next five years. And our focus as the powerhouse of the continent of Africa is to create a platform for the entire world. We deserve that position and that was why we went to the Villa and the President, a Grand patron was gracious enough to give us the Villa to inform all the ambassadors. We had about 36 different countries that came, from the US, from Jamaica, from all over, to hear the good news.  So, that is the IPADA initiative that happens on a regular basis. So, at the end of every year, we decided that let’s just do a short celebration. We’re just like farmers, after farming all year round, you harvest. And that harvest is what we’re doing for IPADA Initiative celebration that happens from the 29th of November to December 7th, and we have the dates for the next five years.ß

What would you say had been the achievements of last year’s IPADA celebration that you want to build upon this year?

When you talk about the benefits and achievements last year, it’s unbelievable. And that was the first we had. We created a concept of from slave ships to cruise ships and luxurious airliners that focus more on the prosperity. The fastest runner in the world, the number one footballer in the world. These are all the things that we celebrate with the IPADA Initiative. So, we got a lot of inquiry from people from different parts of the world. We got agreement signed between Vanuatu government to replicate La Campagne in Vanuatu. We got agreement signed between Rwanda. Almost six different MoUs were signed.

What are your expectations for this year’s celebration?

We will use this opportunity to showcase all these natural resources that I have mentioned and we expect that a lot of people will take advantage of this platform we have created. Lets quickly begin the process of transformation of attractions to destination. So, that would be our expectation. Throughout the year, we like to downplay the celebration. We want to focus more on the daily operation, daily return for people, for 100,000 people to be coming to North, South, East, West, Central Africa. If you look at Ife Town alone, it has approximately 365 festivals. Only one day that they don’t have a festival for people to experience. So we have tremendous amount of tourism products and we believe that this year, we will quietly be exposing what we have to the world. Through this celebration, we want them to ask, what are you guys celebrating? We want to tell them we are celebrating the rebirth of tourism destinations, creation of tourism products and creation of prosperity through tourism. That is what our focus is going to be about.  Let us explore the concept of Agro Ecotourism Heritage Resort Brand. We have strong, vibrant economy and agriculture is key. All over the continent, agriculture is not seen as something prosperous because we’ve not figured out how to make agriculture beautiful. Nobody is going to go to the farms. If you make agriculture beautiful, and merge agriculture with ecotourism, you will see the difference. Ecotourism is what the world is looking for today. They like the natural environment, the plains, the seas, the ocean, the mountains, the hills. Taraba, for example, has 1,400 square kilometers of area. It’s the second largest state in Nigeria. They have over 360 mountains. On one of our properties, we have almost 32 hills, and 40 fields. Then educational tourism. Tourism can also take place where you take students to show them what a cocoa tree looks like. Where they can see cows, rams. They can see antelopes, and see different animals some of them have never seen. What about logistics? You know people coming from outside the country will need visas, transportation and some might have issues of not even wanting to be around hotels within certain places due to insecurity.