President Mnangagwa opens UN gastronomy forum
Leonard Ncube
President Mnangagwa is expected in Victoria Falls this morning to officially open the inaugural United Nations (UN Tourism) Regional Forum on Gastronomy for Africa where eight First Ladies from across the globe are also expected to attend.
About 10 000 locals are expected to attend the official opening. Both the President and First Lady Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa will be honoured by UN Tourism for championing gastronomy tourism across the continent.
Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister Barbara Rwodzi yesterday said First Ladies from Angola and Serbia were expected to arrive in Victoria Falls late yesterday to join their host, Dr Mnangagwa, while the others will be represented.
She said 15 ministers were expected to cross into Victoria Falls from Livingstone in Zambia where they had been attending a conference of Tourism Ministers while three would land at Victoria Falls International Airport.
Other ministers will also be represented by permanent secretaries and heads of tourism boards.
The venue of the three-day conference, Elephant Hills Resort, was a hive of activity yesterday as delegates started arriving, going through the accreditation processes while exhibitors, comprising mostly tertiary institutions and Government agencies, were setting up their stands.
The official opening site had also been set up, with marquees for delegates and VIPs already in place.
Gastronomy speaks to product diversification and use of traditional foods and indigenous knowledge systems as a tourism attraction and is one of the priorities for Africa’s agenda as prepared by member states for brand Africa.
“All is set for the first ever gastronomy forum for Africa and we are ready as the Government of Zimbabwe to receive all the delegates that are coming and all our special delegates led by the UN Tourism Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili who has arrived.
“We are going to be receiving First Ladies from Serbia and Angola any time today (yesterday) and we have many First Ladies who are represented by Ministers in their different capacities. We have eight First Ladies that will be attending the official opening.
“The official opening will be done by His Excellency, our President, Cde Emmerson Mnangagwa and we have the First Lady of course who is going to be honoured by the United Nations. Ministers are being received and the good thing is that there was a conference for Ministers of Tourism in Livingstone and we are just transporting them from Zambia to Zimbabwe,” said Minister Rwodzi.
She said 18 ministers from different countries had confirmed attendance and 15 of them were expected to come through the Victoria Falls Border while three were going to come through Victoria Falls International Airport.
Other Ministers will be represented.
Minister Rwodzi thanked the Departments of Immigration of Zambia and Zimbabwe for a smooth and flawless transition of Ministers from Livingstone to Victoria Falls.
“The bigger crowd for domestic tourism in our country will arrive tomorrow (today). Victoria Falls is full to an extent that it has given us an opportunity to tell a story of what we are growing as the ministry of Tourism within our clusters.
“Rural tourism is now demonstrating its capacity whereby some of the people are going to lodge in rural lodges,” she said.
About 10 000 people are expected for the official opening event today and Matabeleland North was allocated 70 buses by Government to transport people from across the province.
Minister Rwodzi said the actual conference, that ends on Sunday, was oversubscribed with about 450 local and international delegates.
Some of them are local tourism players.
The event, the first of its kind on African land, is an opportunity for Victoria Falls, the country’s prime tourism capital, to prove that it is indeed a world destination of choice.
Yesterday, stakeholders embarked on a clean-up exercise from the city centre to the airport, border post and hotels to spruce up the city’s image ahead of the event.
Zimbabwe was chosen to host the conference in recognition of the work being done by the First Lady who has been promoting the concept of gastronomy tourism from the grassroots, in the wake of an exceptional exhibition of the country’s culture and cuisine by a Zimbabwean delegation at a similar forum held in Spain in October 2023.
The First Lady has been instrumental in advocating for gastronomy tourism through her humanitarian works.
Through her Angel of Hope Foundation, she has also pushed the gastronomy tourism agenda thereby helping market the country’s traditional cuisines.
The inaugural event sets Victoria Falls as a leader in gastronomy on the motherland as Government pursues a new agenda of introducing new tourism activities and packages with sports, gastronomy, religious and cultural tourism top on the agenda.
The First Lady has been promoting cultural norms and values through the National Traditional Cookout Competition where citizens have been showcasing traditional foods from ward up to national level. – Herald