Africa still lagging behind as a meetings host

RELATIVE to the rest of the world, Africa is still lagging well behind the world annual growth in meetings numbers of 13% per annum, but has managed to turn around a declining growth to show a positive growth for the first time of 3,7% in 2001. This is according to the Union of International Associations (UIA) which brought out its annual meetings statistics for 2001 recently. According to the figures, meeting numbers for most countries in Africa are too small to detect longer-term trends, except for South Africa, which is holding a very strong position that it has established over the last decade. In total, Africa has 4,3% share of the total world association's meetings market. The UIA has been gathering statistics on international organisations and their international meetings since 1910, and for the last 50 years has analysed the data and prepared the statistics from meetings that have taken place worldwide. For the purpose of its annual statistics, "international meetings" are defined by the UIA to include meetings organised or sponsored by "international" organisations (i.e. non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) and other meetings of significant international character. The minimum number of participants must be 300, with 40% foreign visitors, at least five nations involved, and lasting a minimum of three days. Rick Taylor, ceo of the Cape Town Convention Bureau said that while the UIA did not measure the full spectrum of meetings and incentives, the statistics were a good indication of how South Africa featured in the world associations industry. "In 2001, South Africa hosted some 24% of the association meetings in Africa, well ahead of Egypt at 16%. Within South Africa, Cape Town led with 30% of the country's market share, and 7,4% of the continent's share. However, relative to the world, this is still very small, with South Africa having only 1% of the total world associations market." However, he added, South Africa was one of the few countries, called "Tigers of the decade: 1992 - 2001", that showed a growth rate of greater than 50% in international meetings in the last 10 years. (Miguel de Sousa)