Unspoken: African Dialogues

Tourism

Tourism has provided a foothold for European powers to keep their hands on their former colonies in Africa.  This is evidenced from early airline routes connecting London to Cape Town to the gentrification of popular tourist destinations pricing people out of their homes.  The guise of a global community has allowed the subtle control of the continent to continue.

Tourism to African countries has existed since ancient times, for example ancient Greeks and Romans were known to travel to Egypt to see their religious festivals and impressive architecture.  For centuries, African countries were conducting tourism and they had autonomy of their heritage, culture and traditions.  A major instigator for the change in the nature of tourism was the Transatlantic Slave Trade during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  The continent and its people had become commodified, with European countries believing they had a right to take what the continent offers.  For Europeans, tourism became a tool to normalise the colonial occupation of African territories and the subsequent consumption and exploitation.  Colonial tourism often changed the gaze by simultaneously possessing and distancing themselves from indigenous Africans.  Western tourists want to see the imagined colonial concept of the exotic savage.  They do not want to see the truth of the complexity of the land and its people, which includes poverty and economic troubles often instigated by the colonisers. 

Tourism has been described as retaining harmful racial identities.  Today, you will see the indigenous people of formerly colonised countries now serving Western tourists as butlers, porters and providing entertainment in the form of their traditions.  This dynamic is seen to be playing into the postcolonial fantasy of tourists and what it means to visit former colonies.

Imperial Airways

Imperial Airways is an airline that the British government tasked with developing intercontinental services to Britain’s overseas interests.  The airline was privately owned but it was sponsored by the government.  Imperial Airways began to grow a network of international routes which operated from London Croydon Airport.  In the 1920s, the routes that became available included Europe, India, Africa, the Middle East, Far East and Australia.                         

Imperial Airways had a number of advertising campaigns that promoted tourism to the African continent.  Imperial Airways Fly to Africa was an advertisement that was presented in the colonial gaze.  The advertisement presents an African woman wearing a short-beaded skirt with her torso exposed, holding a vase on her head, accompanied by a naked child clinging to a goat.  This was an example of a number of their advertising campaigns where they chose to present people from the African continent as exotic and primitive.   Advertising campaigns such as this have also led to the fetishisation of Black women, a stigma that continues today                            

Tourism today

Even today, the continent’s tourism framework is influenced by Western-centric models.  The Western-centric models reflect the same notions that existed decades before, that the East and South of Africa are primitive and remote.  Colonial heritage in the form of architecture is often used as a way of presenting the nostalgia of the colonial past and presenting it in a positive light, in order to appeal to Western tourists.  Today, African countries are looking at tourism as a way to promote economic growth and alleviate poverty.

References

Hirsi, H. (2024) ‘The Eroticised Gaze: Imperial Airways Fly to Africa’, BlackInk: Arts, Heritage, Cultural Politics, Issue 6, Leicester: Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage.

Historic Croydon Airport, ‘The Launch of Britain’s National Airline‘

Available at: https://www.historiccroydonairport.org.uk/history/civil-operations-1920-1939/

Accessed: 06/11/2025

Linehan, D., Clarke, I. and Xie, P.F. (2020) ‘Introduction to Colonialism, Tourism and Place’, Colonialism Tourism and Place, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.

Lwoga, N. and Adu-Ampong, E.A. (2021) ‘Heritage and heritage tourism in Africa: historical overview and contemporary issues in Routledge Handbook of Tourism in Africa, pp. 69-84, London: Routledge.