Breakfast with Alain St. Ange

Alain St. Ange needs no introduction. The widely travelled and highly respected legend of the tourism industry was in Lagos, Nigeria, earlier in the year, on a working visit and to attend the birthday party for Amb. Ikechi Uko. I caught up with him for breakfast and got an autographed copy of his biography, “Alain St. Ange: A Life in Tourism” by Pascal Viroleau, as well as this very interesting interview.

Alain St. Ange is my name. I was the former Minister of Tourism, Civil Aviation, Ports and Marine of the Seychelles. I believe my era has been an era of consolidation of the tourism industry and the biggest success I can say has been for me to bring the Seychelles population as a whole, to believe that they are part and parcel of that industry which remains the pillar of the Seychelles economy.

Obviously too often countries, North, South East and West, from the community of nations that makes tourism, we believe that tourism belongs to the commercial side of the nation, it belongs to the businessmen, to the investors, to the entrepreneurs, but this is wrong.

Tourism belongs to the country, to the country, belongs to the people, and if we work the commercial side, the entrepreneurs, and the people together, valuing all the assets of the country, tourism then succeeds.

It’s success because it is a wholesome approach where the population as a whole defends the industry that is then the pillar of their economy.

Seychelles is a very young country. We had an airport only in 1971, officially opened in 1972. When that airport was being constructed, by the British, we were still a British colony. The chief minister of the era who then became the founding president, Sir James Mancham said, “How do we put a new country on the world map?”

The only access to the country had been through shipping lines from India to Kenya, and we had no planes, we had no other access than that. To bring that new country into the world of tourism, all of a sudden to say, we will have a plane, come and visit us, he needed one event. And he coined the first carnival of the Seychelles. That carnival brought in a lot of press.

He was a very dynamic person. He had that willpower to speak well to the press and the press heard his messages. So that was the first carnival and it positioned Seychelles as the new tourism destination of the world.

Then for independence, we had a second edition of the carnival. Independence was ‘76, the first carnival was ‘72, and then all these years we didn’t really have it. We were happy in our dilemma that we have entered in. We were comfortable, tourism was working.

When I was appointed to office, I said to myself today competition is tougher. Everybody is fishing for the tourists on the same fishing bank. So we need something to bring the press out to Seychelles.

We were fully aware that telling the press to come and look at another beach and to swim in our turquoise blue sea, as much as they are clear and clean, sit on our white sandy beaches, they do it once, they do it twice. They won’t repeat the same story, year in year out because it will get boring and monotonous.

So I decided to bring culture into the tourism marketing of Seychelles. When you bring culture you bring people. So to have an event that had culture with mass participation was interesting. And to make sure that the press came, we coined the phrase, “the Carnival of carnivals.”

So we invited all the best carnivals in the world to come to Seychelles. Brazil appeared. Notting Hill of England, the Venice carnival of Italy, the French carnival of Cannes, then you have Düsseldorf and Köln carnivals of Germany, Trinidad and Tobago appeared.

But to make it even more interesting, we said we’ll bring cultural groups from the community of nations to walk side by side, with the best carnivals.

So there we had an array – the last carnival, we had 36 countries that participated. And we found countries that I didn’t even realize had a deep culture like Sweden, the tribes in the mountains that came in and sung in the carnival. We had a country and Western groups from (the) Americas. We had from everywhere, Russia, China, the Far East, they were all together.

And my message was: we all came to be a country where, like South Africa, the rainbow people, but Seychelles lives as the rainbow nation. It is us. Because we come from a melting pot of cultures, we had nobody in Seychelles before it was settled. And my message was: we all came to be a country where, like South Africa, the rainbow people, but Seychelles lives as the rainbow nation. It is us. Because we come from a melting pot of cultures, we had nobody in Seychelles before it was settled.

So that bringing up different people, of all colours, all ethnic groups possible, immaterial of your religion, your sexual preference, everybody was treated as a person.

And we saw even under the United Nations, every time there’s a general assembly, when somebody speaks, some walk out. Another one speaks, another group walks out, but in Seychelles, every delegation was able to walk side by side and be respected for what they were.

And that made press from all corners of the world. Press descended in droves that we could not hardly contain, TV stations, written press, online press, everybody came, because one, they would see such a diversity of culture together.

Secondly, they saw all the best carnivals walking together. And thirdly, because of that respect that we showed for people, as the country, that said we were the melting pot of cultures and living as a rainbow people. And that was a hit. It is still being spoken about today. It is still remembered and it was the biggest cultural event ever staged in Seychelles.

And I’m really proud that the team of the Ministry of Tourism and Culture in that era under my guidance, staged that event, starting from zero and made an event that was a worldwide success.

Africa’s continent has everything to succeed, because we have everything in this continent. You can talk about safari, you can talk about big game fishing, you can talk about beach holidays – anything you can think of Africa has. And yet, Africa receives about 6.5% of worldwide travellers, very, very low for a continent that has everything. Why is that you can ask?

The challenges Africa faces often are man-made. Secondly, it is the willpower of governments to rectify the challenges. I salute Rwanda, because they said it, they made it.

I salute Kenya, for embarking on a project to make Kenya visa free. Kenya and Rwanda are tourism destinations in their own rights. They compete against each other, even though they are both from part of the East African community. But they’re looking at the bigger picture – bring more people to Africa, every country of Africa would benefit.

Seychelles took that approach of visa free, at independence in ‘76. And our founding president made a statement that resonates today, still today. “Friends of all and enemies of none.

So as you are my friend, you can visit me. You don’t need a visa to visit me. You don’t need permission to visit me; you come because you are my friend. If every nationality is declared a friend of Seychelles, everybody can come. Yes, you will have some people, not the population of a country, that are taken to task, because they’re breaking the rules or the laws.

I mean, one of them is, if you are an importer of drugs into the country, if we see drugs, the country will find a way to limit that entry to the country. But it’s not the whole population. This idea of punishing the whole populace of a country is a wrong approach. It’s an approach that goes against the laws of the world today of the community of nations.

So how do we rectify this part of the challenge which is traveling between states? Traveling within the state itself, and often also access to different countries?

When I was still in office, as Minister, I was sent to Gabon, and because the government in Gabon invited me to discuss their tourism and to see their natural attributes and their key USPs, to see how we can do the tourism in Gabon. I mentioned this one because it was classic. I had to go from Seychelles to Paris, change plane in Paris and go back to Gabon, spending a night in Paris. It was a long journey just across Africa that would have been much simpler. But that is one example, but there are many examples in Africa today.

How do we make ourselves more appealing to the world?

And I think Africa needs, firstly, for Africans to know Africa. Too often Africans don’t know Africa. We speak of our love for Africa, our motherland, and this we are very proud of. But if you go on holiday from Africa, you’ll choose the North Pole, instead of choosing a country in Africa. Because we have this envy of looking at what the other side of the world does.

If we’re going to purchase something, we’ll buy from across the world, instead of buying from Africa. These are challenges that Africa faces, because we need to find a way for each and every African to be proud that we are Africans. We say we are, but are we really?

You can look at every flight coming out of Europe into Africa; it’s full of people, returning with boxes and big bags that have been tied with Sellotape, because we go there for shopping. We don’t think that there is the same thing in our respective countries of our continent. This is a simple example.

But if we were traveling within Africa, we’d increase the travel needs within Africa. And that would propel airlines to put more flights within the continent. We know airlines will not operate just for the sake of putting a flight. Airlines will operate when there’s demand for it.

But if we visited our continent more, I am proud as a person in tourism – a consultant in tourism, that I travel Africa. I travel a lot within Africa. And I see and appreciate what Africa has as a continent. And every day we see something new, the culture, the people, the key USPs that exists, the food, the cuisine of respective countries.

In Ghana, recently I discovered a meal, and I keep thinking and talking about it, because it marked me as a chicken dish that we don’t do, and that is done in that part of the world, that should be today pushed as a natural asset of Africa.

But there are so many of these things, and we need as the continent, to know the continent ourselves, to develop the pride of Africa by Africans, and to forget, forget the past sometime and move forward. We need to move forward because that’s the only way we will achieve new heights.

I can say, often people will say, Africa, colours and so on, Africa has everything – every colour that makes an African. You can have a Chinese African, you can have an Indian African, you can have a white African, and you can have a black African. But they are all Africans, and when we respect this, we would have been moving forward.

When the Americans landed on the moon, they said a small step for men, a giant leap for mankind. If we accept that Africa embraces all these cultures of the world, it will be a small step for us to echo, but a giant leap for Africa, because through this, we find that we become the rainbow continent, and we will live as the rainbow people of a continent.

That will help us go beyond borders that were established to divide different cultures and ethnic groups. It will also help us to be stronger, stronger as a continent, but can each country do it?

No. We need regional bodies to grab themselves, get access to regions. Regions must sit together after that, and say now we will open up the continent. But often countries are limited because of their political, in certain political dilemmas, that they face. And it will always be easier to bring an external person to sit with them to be mandated by three, four countries to make these steps forward. When that is done, Africa will be strong. Today, we have payment difficulties because of foreign currency in some countries. It will happen because we are trading outside the block instead of inside the block. And personally, I do not think it is just BRICs or being part of the UN that will change Africa.

Africa needs to ensure that the African Union is the heart that brings us all together. And that the African Union listens to each sector of the economies of its 54 states, for it to say yes: Tourism is strong in Africa, we have a tourism desk. Mining is strong in Africa, we have a mining desk.

We should not have just a desk to take care of coup d’états or Ebola. This is the least of our problems. These challenges will sort themselves out when the economies of the countries are strong. We need to work to make the economy stronger by looking at every individual asset the country has and propel them to the world.

If when you go to a tourism trade fair, instead of having stands that represent Africa, you have an Africa house when you enter the hall, and the roar of the lion is there to welcome you as you are entering. And you find truthfully different faces of Africa, acting as hostesses. You will find that we will put a new face to Africa, one of unity, one of being ready to receive visitors.

And in so doing, you will enhance the appeal for airlines to look (at) how to tie these countries up together. Because tourism, coming from the farthest countries that send us tourists, it’s no more the era of coming just to one destination. They will want to see one, hop over to the one next door and hop over to two or three states. This is the way that we’re going to tackle this post-COVID and the post-war that we are today facing, between Ukraine and Russia, and Israel and Palestine. We need to find a way to think beyond the past and be ready to challenge the future as a continent.

Well, for the last two or three years have been very easy on the circuit of tourism, consulting. I work with different states of Africa and Asia, primarily ASEAN blocks – and there I work with a minister of tourism. Generally it’s with the minister personally, holding the hands of the minister to see his or her own ministry with an outside eye. Sit, plan; the way I plan my own ministry when I was a minister and we look at what is the best approach. Often in English – well it’s a French saying that was accommodated in English; “No one is a prophet in his own country.”

Getting somebody to sit with you, to look at the challenges you face, and to say this will be the approach you take; meet the trade with you – and the trade always likes to get an external eye looking on the internal issues of a country which is beyond politics, beyond all the bickering internal to the country.

So last year I did many trips in between. When I was in Indonesia – actually in Bali for a conference – a book, a biography on my life in tourism was launched. (It was) promoted by a person from Reunion Island, who is the head of the Vanilla islands group and an Indonesian writer who had put together the book.

It was a real honour to have a biography launched. Yes, they interviewed me for hours and hours to find the intricate dilemmas of my work as minister – and my work in the private sector as well before.

Now this week I’m launching a family history book which retraces my family and that of my wife and it’s called “Alain & Ginette St. Ange Family Ties.”

We often are so embroiled in our daily work. We forget to realize who are, the family members we have, and to give them the due respect; those who are here, alive; those who are happily departed, and those who help create the life that you have today.

Doing work across Africa, working across the ASEAN block; you realize that there is a need for togetherness. But when you’re working across Africa and I was lucky because I managed to get – it was advertised by the World Bank for a consultancy with Ghana, to help tourism in Ghana.

When I got that, it was a short consultancy for eight months. But you realize that there is work to be done in Africa. It’s no use screaming to the world that we want this help. We want this aid. We want that and we want this. Get professionals from our own continent to work with us. They understand us. They know us. They know the mentality in Africa. And they know the customs of Africa. Working this way, Africa will succeed.

So I did a lot. And this year, I’m doing even more. I’m surprised for the first six months of the year. I’ll be flying across Africa. And finally there’s a big conference about Africa in New York in June, where I have been invited to be one of the four speakers. So there is a lot of this happening.

But I also do guest speaking; I’m on this guest speaker’s list, invited here and there just to deliver an address. I enjoy that a lot. But I’m given topics more on tourism, sustainable tourism, aviation, and how to remodel the tourism industry. These take me to a point that was aired earlier. The United Nations World Tourism Organization, UNWTO. I was one of those who ran to be Secretary-General for Africa, representing Africa in that point.

I called that, the highest office of a tourism minister. Not the highest office of government civil servants or ambassadors – the highest office of a tourism minister. You need to understand tourism. You need to have lived tourism for you to lead tourism. Otherwise it’s impossible.

This is why I’m advocating strongly that Africa needs an African tourism ministers’ body. That sits like the UNWTO, that talks about Africa. Unity in Africa, first. Elect somebody, affiliated with the African Union, and then move this tourism agenda forward.

Tourism is the only industry in the world that puts money directly in the pockets of its inhabitants. You can be a small businessman; you can be a large businessman. You can be somebody renting bicycles, selling fruits and crops and so on – all that is tourism.

But how do we recognize it? How do we help it? How do we move this agenda forward with the respective heads of state and council of ministers of the 54 states?

If Africa embarks on forming a tourism body for Africa, the same way we have SADC, or we have COMESSA and so on, do one for tourism and let Africa bring unity within the continent, find the unique selling points of Africa, spell out to the world its unique selling points, and then Africa through this body can finally rewrite its own narrative.

Today when we have a commotion in Africa, a disease like Ebola, a coup d’état here, a coup d’état there, this is news that makes the world. Positive news doesn’t make it, because it is not sensational in Africa. But if Africa was rewriting its own narrative, you will tell the world its positives, and also look at its challenges. But that would spell a better future for the African population of this great continent.

We need to do that, and the sooner we embark on this as a resolution of the African Union, in one of its general assemblies, the sooner Africa will look at its tourism industry, with the new eye, an eye that is really focusing on the Africans, first and foremost, each and every African, to give them an insight into tourism, to give them the edge of working in tourism, as entrepreneurs at different scale supply, and to make them small business people on their own continent.

And then we find a way how to really meet, what an African can do, and what a foreign entity can do.

There must be something that’s kept for us as Africans. You can’t open the world to come to you, with their might and finances, and you find that the African is edged out, and slowly is moved back into the bush, and he cannot make ends meet, and that will be detrimental to the successful progress of the tourism industry. I think that’s it now.

Mid-year, latest I should actually have my own autobiography. It’s something I’ve been playing with for years, playing with the idea that I need, an autobiography that looks at my life as a boy growing up on a small island with 1500 people in those days, and growing up there in a family that were traditionally farmers and plumbers. They did vanilla, coconuts – dried the coconuts, did oil, did farming. And I grew up and enjoyed this life on a farm with school friends, and had the four-hour boat ride after that to the main island, where I was at school. And we did that three times a year on school holidays; we went back to the island of La Digue.

My autobiography will go through this. We’ll go through the pains and tribulations also of the family. We lived as a family, obviously my grandfather and my father, myself, in that era when we were still a British colony, we went through this. We saw independence arrived. We saw the military coup that took place. We lived through that one part, the socialists, approach of government, and then a return to multi-party democracy.

So, all that will come through it – my life in tourism in the private sector, also my life in tourism as a government civil servant, and finally as a minister. I think my autobiography is rich because it is diverse. And I’ll end with the simple word; “I’ve had a full life, and I’ve had no regrets.” Nowhere in the book will you see, what if and what, what if I had been able to do that. I’ve done what I wanted to do, and I’ve got absolutely no regrets whatsoever.

This autobiography will be followed by two books, which will be my last two, in my own series. One will be my life and my time in politics and my life and my time in tourism. This one will be detailed – the political involvement of my family and myself in Seychelles – and also my own involvement, and that of my father’s in tourism, because he was one of the pioneers of tourism, starting a small hotel, just at the opening of the airport in Seychelles.

So, he had a foresight, he had a vision, and he was probably instrumental in that today. I did both what he did, following his footsteps in politics, and following his footsteps in becoming somebody, who lived long, a love for tourism, and who believed that tourism was not an activity. But it was indeed an industry.

That when you embarked in, you had to do it with your heart, and you really had to be committed for this world of tourism, because as much of this, that because employer in the world, it is also one that deals with friends, that deals with connections, and that we’ve locked this partnership of wanting to stay together.

Interview by ‘Niyi David (More Cream Than Coffee)

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