The Ministry of Tourism has claimed generating 3.2 billion dollars in revenue over the past nine months from 861,126 foreign tourists and domestic visitors. This is a little lower than the country’s average annual export proceeds.
However, such figures are being disputed given that one of Ethiopia's major tourism regions, Amhara, has been embroiled in internal conflict. The neighboring Tigray region has also only recently emerged from two years of civil war. Large parts of Oromia, the country’s largest region, is also in the midst of internal conflict.
For the ministry to have achieved 3.2 billion dollars in foreign exchange alone, each reported international tourist would have had to spend an average of 3,720 dollars.
The validity of Ethiopia's tourism statistics has faced increased scrutiny before. Â
In 2018, the government claimed 1.8 billion dollars from tourism, but the World Economic Forum (WEF) found actual earnings were only 444 million dollars. The WEF also estimated that 87 percent of travelers spend less than seven days, contradicting the Ministry's figures.
"Transparency and accurate measuring of the sector's true performance is important for realistic growth targets and understanding challenges that remain. But that doesn’t seem to be happening whenever tourism figure is reported in Ethiopia," said an expert with over a decade of experience in tourism.
"With such discrepancies between the reported data and independent analysis in the past, the ministry will need to provide clear evidence to back its latest 3.2 billion dollars claim," the expert added.
