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Zimbabwe, represented by the Zimbabwe Embassy in Tokyo, Japan, is facilitating a familiarisation tour of Zimbabwe by 13 members of Millennium Promise Japan (MPJ).
This is a Japanese-based Non-profit organization that was formed in April 2008 and is involved in education, food and material assistance, and disaster response to affected countries across the globe. The organization which has approximately 80 members from about 10 Universities across Japan has been supporting the Millennium Villages Projects in Sub-Saharan Africa over the years.
This time, through their membership, they are collaborating with 13 University students who are focusing on research projects related to Africa. MPJ’s formation was mainly to alleviate poverty in Africa and to popularise the continent to the Japanese people hence the projects conducted under the motto to “Study and disseminate about Africa” which resonates very well with one of our main tourism objectives for this market “to create awareness”.
The travelling students have interests in categories such as history and culture, politics, economics, environment, wildlife, arts, and entertainment.
They chose Zimbabwe following the Zimbabwe Embassy’s engagement drive which led to a destination presentation in December 2023 at the Tokyo University of Foreign Languages.
Japan is a key tourism source market for Zimbabwe and the Youthful segment is one of our major targets with great potential to influence a larger proportion through the social media network. They are in Zimbabwe from 2 – 17 March and will visit Harare and its surroundings, Masvingo, Bulawayo, Hwange, and Victoria Falls.
A solid journey programme (itinerary) has been prepared for them to visit most of our major tourism highlights in Zimbabwe and their daily experience will be shared on Instagram, the X, and YouTube very popular social media platforms across Japan.
A debrief meeting with the tourism minister to discuss more on their experiences has been set for the 17th of March 2024 in Bulawayo before their departure. This is indeed a positive development as we push for tourism growth in terms of arrivals from the major global source markets to achieve the 5 billion tourism economy as well as Vision 2030.