An aerial shot of Nairobi City
Brand Kenya CEO Mary Kimonye said much more financing needs to be pumped into branding the country that has a brand value of $18.7 billion, emphasising the need to boost foreign investment in Kenya.
“Our investment level is not good enough. In terms of our financial size investment it is low on global standards marking ourselves against countries like Egypt and South Africa,” she said.
Assistant Tourism Minister Cecily Mbarire said the ministry gets less than Sh1 billion to market Kenya globally compared to countries like South Africa that budgets Sh2 billion to market regionally.
“Until a time that we begin to put more money to market Kenya we’ll still have an uphill task to challenge our competitors in Africa,” she said.
South Africa topped the list of the top 10 branded African countries with a brand value of $217.7 billion, followed by Egypt with a $109 billion brand value in second place and Nigeria with a $87.9 billion brand value as third.
Now in its second year, the Most Valuable African Nation Brand’s list featured a new entrant, Ethiopia, which replaces Libya on the tenth spot, with Ghana and Kenya swapping positions.
Ghana moved one position lower to occupy the ninth spot, with the rest of the countries maintaining their positions from last year’s rankings.
“The Top 10 Most Valuable African Nations are without question among the most dynamic African nations at the forefront of re-inventing the Africa’s image, reputation and competitiveness,” Thebe Ikalafeng, Founder & Chairman, Brand Africa said.
Brand South Africa Chief Executive Miller Matola said partnering with government, the private sector and civil society in South Africa contributed to the countries success adding the strong support of domestic tourism that drives the sector with 70 percent.
“We realised that our competitiveness in the region was hinged on a strong domestic base, so when our other source markets abroad suffered would not feel the effect as much,” he said.
With tourism contributing seven percent to GDP South Africa plans to increase this figure by boosting arrivals to over 40 million by 2015.
