Malawi to Train 500 Tourism MSMEs

By Kondwani Magombo

Mangochi, September 7, Mana: The Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Wildlife says it will train owners of 500 micro small medium enterprises (MSMEs) operating in the tourism industry to build their capacity for them to be competent on the sector’s market.

Acting Director of Tourism, Sosten Lingwalanya, disclosed this on Friday during the closing ceremony of 10-day training of trainers (ToT) for 26 tourism MSMEs held at Nkopola Lodge in Mangochi.

Lingwalanya said the 26 trained trainers would facilitate the training of 500 MSMEs operating in the tourism industry across the country.  

“We’ll be calling upon over 1,600 licensed operators that we have in our database for them to express interest for training and out of these we will select 500 operators with women and the youth as our special target,” explained Lingwalanya.

He said when trained, the 500 MSMEs will likely transform the industry with their learned skills and competencies.

The ministry is implementing the trainings with funding from the African Development Bank under the project, Promoting Investment and Competitiveness in the Tourism Sector (PICTS).

The trainings follow a baseline survey that government’s partner in the project, Howarth HTL Consultants conducted which revealed “enormous demand” for training of MSMEs operating in the sector.

Lead trainer and representative of the consulting company, Dr. Peter Jere, said after the survey material was developed to “equip the trainers with the necessary skills to communicate and engage the trainees to produce best results in the industry”.

Key topics during the 10-day training included tourism business motivation, tourism products for Malawi, understanding tourism business centric models and patterns, tourism operations management, managing tourism business finance and financial management.

One of the trained trainers, Kamoza Kumwenda, described the ToT as timely and that the trainers would likely make a difference when they impart the acquired skills to the other 500 MSMEs operating in the tourism sector.