Since 2012, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and the Regional Tourism Organization of Southern Africa (RETOSA) have collaborated in the organization of a series of workshops aimed at providing capacity building to 15 Southern African countries namely, Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, in the strengthening of their national Systems of Tourism Statistics (STS) with a view to developing the Tourism Satellite Accounts (TSA)

The Seventh Workshop in this series took place in Nyanga, Zimbabwe from April 4- 8, 2016, and over 50 participates from 10 countries participated in this workshop.

The main objectives of the five day Workshop were to review the progress and developments made by countries in STS/TSA development; provide technical guidance to address challenges faced by national administrations in enhancing the availability and quality of tourism statistics; and provide technical recommendations on the way forward for individual country teams and the region as a whole.

The presentations were at a high technical level and covered all ten TSA Tables. Each of the countries reported upon progress, data gaps, challenges, the way forward for themselves, as well as indicating their coverage of the TSA Ten Tables and, where possible, their estimation of the contribution of tourism to the economy of their country as measured by the Tourism Direct Gross Value Added (TDGVA). All the work was in accordance with the key guidelines provided by UNWTO in their International Recommendations on Tourism Statistics (IRTS 2008) and the Tourism Satellite Account: Recommendations on Methodological Framework (TSA:RMF 2008).

A final workshop is scheduled to be held in the first week of July 2016.  It is anticipated that as many as 9 countries from Southern Africa will present their experimental TSA