Victoria Falls spruces up for United Nations Gastronomy Conference

IN an effort to keep Victoria Falls in its pristine state and present the city as a clean tourism destination, stakeholders have embarked on a massive clean-up exercise to pick litter ahead of the United Nations Tourism (UN Tourism) Regional Forum on Gastronomy Forum for Africa which starts Friday.

President Mnangagwa is expected to officially open the event at Elephant Hills Resort Golf Course on Friday.

Victoria Falls City Council mobilised the clean-up in partnership with the Environmental Management Agency to complement efforts by Pristine Victoria Falls Society and Greenline Africa.

Government departments such as Immigration, Zimra and Zimbabwe Tourism Authority as well as tourism operators and hotels such as Rainbow, Azambezi, Elephant Hills, Shearwater and a group of Youth in Tourism organisation were allocated sections of the city to clean.

Pristine Victoria Falls Society and Greenline Africa were also represented.

Youth in Tourism were deployed along Airport Road from Masue Bridge while operators are picking around the city centre, border post and other areas.

Delegates have started arriving for the event which will attract about 10 000 people tomorrow.

Gastronomy speaks to product diversification and use of traditional foods and indigenous knowledge systems as a tourism attraction and is one of the priorities for Africa agenda as prepared by member states for brand Africa.

Zimbabwe was chosen to host the forum in recognition of the work being done by the First Lady Amai Auxilia Mnangagwa who has been promoting the concept of gastronomy tourism from the grassroots, has been instrumental in advocating for gastronomy tourism through her humanitarian work through her Angel of Hope Foundation locally and abroad.

A Zimbabwean delegation made an exceptional exhibition of the country’s culture and cuisine at a similar forum held in Spain in October 2023.

The First Lady has also pushed the gastronomy tourism agenda thereby helping market the country’s traditional cuisines as she has been promoting cultural norms and values through the National Traditional Cookout Competition where citizens have been showcasing traditional foods from ward up to national level.

The inaugural event sets the destination as a leader in gastronomy on the motherland as Government pursues a new agenda of introducing new tourism activities and packages with sports, gastronomy, religious and cultural tourism top on the agenda.