Tanzania readies for Leon Sullivan Africa Summit

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (eTN) - Four months ahead, Tanzania has launched a media campaign to attract African American investors to participate in the Eighth Leon Sullivan Summit to be held in Tanzania’s northern tourist city of Arusha in June.

The national and international media campaigns are aimed at luring African Diaspora and other business stakeholders from United States, Africa and other parts of the globe to come to Tanzania and take chances available in tourist and infrastructure development investments.

Over 4,000 delegates made up of prominent personalities including all African heads of state have been invited to participate the four-day summit, organized jointly by the US-based Leon H. Sullivan Foundation and the Tanzanian government.

Tanzania’s Leon Sullivan Summit coordinator Mrs. Shamim Nyanduga said the media campaign is made up of global campaigns through documentary films shown in Delta Airlines, CNN and Tanzanian diplomatic missions.

Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete launched the international campaign for the summit in New York in September last year.

With a theme of “Tourism and Infrastructure Development,” the summit’s objective is to promote development in infrastructure and tourism in Tanzania and the African continent as a whole.

President Kikwete said there was a need for Tanzanians to Africans to understand what the Leon Sullivan Summit was all about to enable them have a clear picture. “What we are doing fulfils our desire to have our people become aware of what the Sullivan Summits are all about, what they stand for, and the principles and ideas behind them,” he said.

The president added that the summits facilitated the active role of the late Reverend Leon Sullivan’s ideas, particularly his dream of building a bridge between Africa and America.
“Indeed the Sullivan summits are increasingly succeeding in establishing the bridge through which Africa and the African Diaspora interact and pursue their collective well-being and interests,” Kikwete said.

The president agreed to host the historical summit that will take place from June 2 to 6 this year. He received a torch as a host of the scheduled summit from the former Nigerian President Mr. Olusegun Obasanjo during the last summit held in Abuja, Nigeria in 2006.

Showing to be most interested in tourism development for his country, President Kikwete said the Eighth Leon Sullivan conference will be taking place in Arusha, the center of Tanzania’s tourism. “I welcome you to meet in Arusha, the center of the African continent where tourism is dominating and where is the home of the magnificent tourist attractions of Ngorongoro, Serengeti and Mount Kilimanjaro,” President Kikwete told the delegates in Abuja on receiving the summit’s torch.

He said the scheduled summit would provide wide opportunities to American tourist suppliers and the African tourist product sellers in exchanging business under the African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) that was initiated by the US government.

Leon Sullivan Foundation has been promoting business between Africa and the rich African Americans across the Atlantic to come together and raise resources for development of the African continent.

This year’s Leon Sullivan Foundation summit will be the third biggest gathering of the African Diaspora in the US. The 23rd Africa Travel Association (ATA) first gathered in May 1998 and the thirty-third ATA conference from May 19 to 23 will be the second such gathering to be held in the same venue.

Chairman of the foundation and former US ambassador to United Nations Andrew Young, said he will be working closely with the Tanzanian president in attracting prominent business executives in America to participate the scheduled conference.

The Sullivan Summits are organized by the Leon H. Sullivan Foundation to highlight key issues and best practices, stimulate discussion and define opportunities, promote private enterprise and foster high-level strategic partnerships.

Creative and innovative initiatives emerge out of discussions and negotiations at the summit, and new relationships are brokered in order to make those initiatives a reality.

Located exactly at the center of African continent, Arusha is now set to welcome African American delegates in its fast growing tourist image through modern hotels, lodges, restaurants and fleets of tourist vehicles.

The Arusha International Conference Center (AICC) and the Ngurdoto Mountain Lodge have been added with conference facilities to accommodate big international conference delegates.

The Eighth Leon Sullivan conference will be the for the first of its kind gathering in Eastern Africa to take place on the closer foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa.

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