Africa attracted more than $50bn in foreign direct investment during 2024, including $6.6bn committed to 105 announced greenfield tourism projects since 2019, according to the first regional investment report published by UN Tourism.
The Madrid-based agency, formerly the UN World Tourism Organization, framed the continent as the fastest-growing FDI destination worldwide and set out a case for capital to flow into hotels, ecotourism, cultural travel and coastal resorts across its 54 countries. The report, Tourism Investment Trends and Opportunities in Africa, is the agency’s first continent-wide investment guide and carries an unusually direct sales pitch for a UN body, telling would-be investors the region is “open for business”.
The 105 greenfield tourism projects tracked since 2019 are expected to create more than 15,100 direct jobs, the report found. Tourism now accounts for 41% of Africa’s service exports, the highest share of any world region, and generated $52bn in tourism exports in 2024. The continent welcomed close to 74mn international visitors that year and took more than $42bn in tourism receipts.
For the trade, the headline number worth watching is the concentration of that money. Between 2019 and 2024, nearly 90% of announced greenfield tourism investment went into accommodation, overwhelmingly hotels and resorts, leaving whole categories of experience-led travel comparatively starved of capital. That imbalance is where the report locates its opportunity, and where operators, DMCs and inbound specialists will find the clearest read on where product gaps sit.
Where the money is going
The United States led tourism greenfield investment by value, with 17 projects worth $1.15bn, according to the report. China followed with six projects worth $602mn, then Spain with seven projects worth $591mn, the United Arab Emirates with 12 projects worth $527mn, Morocco with six projects worth $431mn and France with seven projects worth $426mn. Germany, Singapore, Qatar, Thailand, Belgium, Mauritius and Kenya also feature among active source markets.
The pipeline of branded rooms tells its own story. Marriott International has the largest planned footprint on the continent with 165 hotels and 29,639 rooms in development, a share of 28.4% of the tracked pipeline. Hilton follows with 93 hotels and 17,040 rooms, then Accor with 73 properties and 15,013 rooms, IHG with 40 hotels and 7,951 rooms, and Radisson Hotel Group with 32 hotels. All five chains added rooms to their African development pipelines between 2024 and 2025.
North Africa was the standout on wider FDI. Inflows to the subregion surged 277%, climbing from $13bn to $51bn, with Morocco up 55% to $1.6bn and Tunisia up 21% to $936mn. Southern Africa grew 44% to $11bn, while Central and East Africa posted more modest gains of 13% and 12% respectively. West Africa was the only subregion to slip, with FDI down 7% to $15bn.
A subregional map for product buyers
The report divides the continent into five investment stories, and each one points at a different kind of trade product.
North Africa is positioning itself around integrated tourism zones and cultural heritage, backed by heavy state spending on infrastructure and renewable energy. Southern Africa pairs mature safari markets with high-end and adventure offerings, the segment most familiar to established outbound operators. East Africa leads on ecotourism and conservation-finance models, an increasingly investable category as carbon and biodiversity markets mature. West Africa is building momentum through cultural, creative and diaspora-led travel, a segment tied closely to heritage routes and the growing “roots” market out of North America and Europe. Central Africa remains the least developed, offering untapped biodiversity, nature reserves and new transport corridors for operators willing to move early.
Beyond accommodation, UN Tourism flags a spread of niches it considers investment-ready but under-capitalised: meetings, congresses, conventions and incentives (MCCI); religious and diaspora travel; gastronomy; wellness; sports tourism; and coastal and maritime experiences. For inbound agents and tour builders, that list doubles as a product-development brief.
Why it matters for the trade
The value of this report to the travel trade is less in the top-line FDI figure than in what it signals about the shape of the product coming to market. A pipeline weighted almost entirely toward hotel rooms means bed stock is arriving faster than the ground experiences, transfers, guiding capacity and distribution systems needed to fill and sell it. For DMCs, inbound operators and OTAs, that gap is commercial oxygen. New properties in Morocco, Rwanda, Kenya and across Southern Africa will need contracting partners, local excursion inventory and connectivity into global booking channels long before the concrete has cured, and the trade that positions itself now will be the trade that fills those rooms in 2027 and 2028.
The subregional split also reshapes where sales and marketing effort should sit. Diaspora and heritage travel into West Africa is a structurally different sell to safari and adventure into Southern Africa, requiring different feeder markets, different seasonality assumptions and different storytelling. Operators treating “Africa” as a single line on a rate sheet will miss the point the report is making, which is that volatility in one subregion is routinely offset by growth in another, a hedge that only works if a business is genuinely diversified across the continent rather than concentrated in one or two anchor destinations.
There is a distribution angle too. UN Tourism points to e-visa systems, mobile booking and smart-city features reshaping the visitor experience, alongside the Single African Air Transport Market and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) knitting the region into a more open market for people and capital. Improved air connectivity and simpler visa regimes are the two levers that most directly move sellable volume for the trade, and both are moving in the right direction. Agents should be watching route announcements and visa-on-arrival expansions as closely as they watch hotel openings.
Risk has not vanished. The report is candid that outdated infrastructure, regulatory uncertainty and lingering risk perceptions still cap the continent’s potential, and that project timelines run longer than in more developed markets. But the trade reading this should note who is already committed. When Marriott, Hilton and Accor are collectively developing tens of thousands of rooms, and when the likes of Radisson are publicly describing African complexity as a spur to “better planning, stronger teams and more reliable financing”, the pipeline risk is being underwritten by some of the largest balance sheets in global hospitality. That de-risks the contracting decision for smaller trade partners downstream.
The investor mood
The report leans heavily on private-sector voices to make its case, and their language is telling. “I am not afraid of emerging markets. Investing in Africa is an affordable risk, with nice returns,” said Justo García Gil, chief executive officer of HOMT España. Ramsay Rankoussi, vice president of development for Africa and Turkey at Radisson Hotel Group, argued that longer development timelines force discipline that pays off later, describing a process that is “more structured and prudent”.
UN Tourism puts internal rates of return on SDG-aligned projects at between 15% and 20%, a band it uses to argue that impact and yield are not in tension. Executive Director Natalia Bayona wrote that the agency is committed to “connecting capital with opportunity” and strengthening the investment environment across the region, while Regional Director for Africa Elcia Grandcourt said the continent’s narrative is shifting away from persistent stereotypes toward recognition of its stability and world-class destinations.
Whether the capital follows the rhetoric will depend on execution over the next three to five years. What the report makes clear is that the hotel groups have already made their bet, and the rest of the value chain now has a window to build the product, the connectivity and the distribution that will decide how much of Africa’s tourism promise actually converts.