Africa's National Tourist Information Offices

I've spent quite some time this week compiling a list National Tourist Offices for every African country. It's interesting how the quality of information that's presented on these government run web sites reflect quite accurately, what you can expect when you arrive in the country itself. Algeria's web site is neatly planned, multi-lingual, and works well for the most part, despite the fact that tourism isn't a huge part of their economy.

Even though the Libyan government itself doesn't allow for a lot of opposition chit chat inside the country, the official tourism web site is currently running a "pool" (should be poll I think) that begs the question "Do you think the website of the General People's Committee for tourism plays a good role definition tourism in Libya ?" I voted "to a greater extent".

Burundi, a tiny country in East Africa, also has a remarkably well organized web site despite the relatively small number of tourists visiting. From their web site, I learned that Burundi aims to have 4 world class hotels in the country by 2010 to increase their tourism potential.

Nigeria, West Africa's economic giant, has a confusing number of "official" web sites and tourist information offices, seemingly competing with one another. What I believe to be the true "official" web site has some very loud music playing which is somewhat distracting although it's a decent song with a nice message. I enjoyed this little taste of Nigeria, it's certainly not a boring destination by any means.

And then of course, the Somali tourist office web site is currently not working and while looking for further information I came across a rather unfortunate news story. In 2002 the new tourism minister was in fact kidnapped. A tough job from every angle.

Even if you're not necessarily looking for information, it's fun to look at these web sites and get a little peek at Africa's fifty-two nations, and how they like to represent themselves officially. Check out Africa's National Tourist Offices...

_{Image of the Pyramids and Sphynx, Egypt - Africa's Number One Tourist Destination -- © David Hutchinson}