By Larissa Ntoubia
Reliable energy infrastructure is a strategic investment in economic transformation. By powering tourism, Central African countries will attract investment, expand employment opportunities, and build a more competitive and diversified regional economy
Central Africa is endowed with some of Africa’s most remarkable tourism assets, including the Sangha Trinational Landscape spanning Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and the Republic of the Congo, and the Loango National Park in Gabon. Yet despite this potential, tourism remains one of the region’s weakest sectors, contributing less than 3% to GDP and employment. Inadequate transport, limited marketing, and regulatory constraints are often cited as barriers, but one overlooked constraint is access to reliable energy. Frequent outages, high electricity costs, and limited rural electrification raise operating expenses, discourage investment, and reduce visitor experience, all of which limit job creation.
As Central African governments seek to diversify beyond oil, mining, and timber, reliable and sustainable energy infrastructure should be treated as investment in a productive sector capable of generating inclusive growth. Tourism is one such sector. Expanding reliable energy to tourism destinations can attract private investment, stimulate entrepreneurship, and create decent jobs, particularly for women and young people. This paper examines how investment in energy infrastructure can catalyze tourism-led job creation in Central Africa, why that potential remains largely unrealized despite past infrastructure spending, and what policies would translate it into employment at scale.
Reliable Energy: Powering Tourism Competitiveness in Central Africa
Central Africa’s tourism sector underperforms not due to lack of assets, but because structural bottlenecks raise costs and weaken competitiveness. Unreliable electricity is especially damaging: in the Central African Republic, access to electricity was only 17.6% in 2023. Firms that depend on diesel generators face rising costs, more pollution, and lower investor returns, making the region less attractive than destinations with stronger energy systems. The problem is worse in rural and protected areas, where many of the best tourism sites are located but grid access is weakest; parks and reserves need power for visitor centers, refrigeration, and digital payments, yet high upfront costs often make projects less feasible.
Cameroon and Gabon show the same pattern: rich tourism assets, but weak supporting infrastructure that prevents those assets from becoming competitive tourism products. Cameroon has about 930 recognized tourist sites, yet tourism contributes only 4.1% of GDP and less than 15% of jobs, while site development costs can reach CFA500 million for a local site and CFA1.5 billion for a national one, showing how infrastructure and financing gaps slow the conversion of potential into revenue. Resorts in Kribi, lodges near Waza reserve, and conference facilities near Yaoundé and Douala often face outages that force them onto diesel generators, raising costs, reducing service quality, and discouraging both investors and visitors. Electricity is not just a utility input but an economic enabler that lowers business costs and makes destinations investable. Gabon’s protected areas, including Loango National Park, similarly need reliable and sustainable electricity to strengthen visitor services and attract greater private investment.
From Energy Infrastructure to Employment
Tourism is one of the most labour-intensive sectors of the economy, generating employment across hospitality, transport, agriculture, creative services, and local supply chains. South Africa’s tourism sector directly employed 953,981 people in 2024, equal to 5.7% of total jobs, demonstrating tourism’s employment potential when supported by adequate infrastructure. In Central Africa, if reliable electricity lowers operating costs and attracts investment into hotels, eco-lodges, restaurants, and conference facilities, each project generates not only direct jobs but also demand for local suppliers and contractors, from electricians and builders to farmers and transport operators. This produces a wider employment multiplier than in many capital-intensive sectors, with benefits especially important for women and young people working in hospitality, food services, cultural enterprises, guiding, and small-scale trade. A single lodge near a national park can create demand for local vegetables, meat, laundry, transport, and handicrafts well beyond the jobs it hires directly, making energy investment a productive input into tourism-led development rather than a purely utility-sector concern.
Beyond Infrastructure: Why Tourism Remains Underdeveloped
Energy is necessary but not sufficient. Tourism often stays underdeveloped even where power improves, because of constraints beyond the grid. The investment climate is difficult: Cameroon, CEMAC’s highest-ranked economy, sits at 167th of 190 countries on the World Bank’s ease-of-doing-business index, and a 2025 UNCTAD review found investor experience marked by administrative complexity around business creation. Connectivity is weak: regional flight links are thin, and a CEMAC-wide regional airline and visa-free travel regime have circulated for over a decade without full implementation, making cross-border itineraries hard to build. Destination management is fragmented: few flagship sites have dedicated organizations for visitor data, service standards, or marketing, so sites like Waza reserve struggle to convert assets into bookable experiences. Skills are scarce: hospitality and destination-management training lag demand, limiting service quality even where hotels and lodges are powered. Promotion is underfunded: Central African destinations remain largely absent from international marketing and distribution channels. Together, these gaps mean cheaper electricity alone will not generate the visitor growth needed for jobs at scale.
Targeting Energy Investment for Maximum Employment Impact
Tourism jobs run through visitor spending, therefore the type of energy investment matters as much as its volume. Four categories offer the strongest employment returns.
- Protected areas and ecotourism sites. Off-grid solar for visitor centers and ranger stations creates guide and lodge jobs and demand for local suppliers, while strengthening conservation financing.
- Hospitality infrastructure. Reliable power for hotels and resorts in hubs like Kribi and Douala cuts diesel dependence and supports construction, housekeeping, and food-service jobs.
- Conference and business tourism. Powered convention centers let capitals compete for regional events, driving catering, logistics, and event-management jobs.
- Digital tourism services. Stable power and connectivity for booking and payment platforms allows small operators to reach international travelers directly, creating IT and digital-marketing jobs, especially for youth.
Sequencing investment toward these uses enables governments concentrate limited finance where employment returns are highest.
Policy Recommendations
- Prioritize tourism zones in energy planning, sequenced by employment potential. Governments should integrate tourism priorities into national energy investment plans, prioritizing reliable electricity first for protected areas and ecotourism sites, hospitality hubs, and conference venues, the categories identified above as delivering the largest direct and indirect job creation per investment.
- Expand renewable and decentralized energy solutions, backed by fiscal incentives. Governments should promote solar mini-grids and hybrid systems for protected areas and rural tourism sites where grid expansion is financially or technically unviable, and pair this with tax and financing incentives for tourism enterprises that adopt renewable and energy-efficient infrastructure.
- Invest in digital enablement alongside electrification. Energy investment plans for tourism destinations should include reliable connectivity for booking, payment, and marketing platforms, allowing small and community-based operators to capture direct bookings and creating digital-economy jobs for young people.
- Strengthen regional cooperation on energy, tourism, and connectivity. ECCAS and CEMAC should coordinate cross-border investment in energy and transport infrastructure, and accelerate stalled initiatives such as visa-free travel and a regional airline, to link national tourism assets into integrated, marketable regional circuits.
Conclusion
Central Africa does not need more isolated tourism projects; it needs an environment that makes tourism investable at scale. Reliable energy is the foundation, but on its own it cannot deliver jobs. If governments connect energy policy to tourism development, and pair it with reforms to the investment climate, connectivity, destination management, skills, and promotion, they can lower business costs, attract private capital, create jobs for women and youth, and turn Central Africa’s natural and cultural assets into a durable source of employment and inclusive economic growth.
Larissa Ntoubia
Ntoubia Ngapmen Larissa, holds a Bachelor’s degree in Banking and Finance and a Master’s degree in Economics and Financial Engineering from the University of Yaoundé II Soa. She is currently a research assistant at the Nkafu Policy Institute of Denis and Lenora Foretia Foundation under the Economic Affairs Division.
