‘IPADA is a celebration of rebirth of tourism destinations, products, prosperity’

For over four decades, Wanle Akinboboye has been in the Nigerian and African tourism and hospitality space, amid huge impacts. Apart from developing the La Campagne Tropicana Beach Resort brand, the first-ever African themed beach resort, he has also invented many innovations that are making impacts today. Some of them are Agro Ecotourism Heritage Resort Brand and the IPADA Celebration initiative, which debuted last year.

In this interview, Akinboboye shares with Obinna Emelike the rationale for the celebration, feats of last year’s event, impact on tourism, plan for this year’s celebration, interest in the Caribbeans, among others.

Excerpt:

What is the vision of IPADA Celebrations and what achievement do you want to build upon this year?

Let us first talk about the IPADA initiative, and the concept behind it.

We must on a regular basis ask ourselves a very important question, why are we the wealthiest, when it comes to natural resources, and at the same time, we are regarded as the poorest?

With 30.3 million square kilometers of area, Africa is huge. It has 1.5 billion people, an additional 120 million in Brazil, over 30 million in the Caribbean, almost 49 million in the United States of America, and then you have over 2 million lovers of Africa. The above makes one to ask why Africa is the poorest despite our wealth in natural resources, and huge population.

I believe that the biggest problem we have as a continent is that we have not found a formula for us to come together.

As one unit, the continent of Africa is a father with 55 children, and sadly not one of them is actually claiming him because it has always been Nigeria for Nigeria, Togo for Togo, South Africa for South Africa and Kenya for Kenya.

The reality is that tourism requires a strategic alliance to grow in Africa.

For tourism to thrive, you cannot be the lone ranger. You cannot be the only one in the wilderness. You must bring together the different advantages that you have and showcase them to the world and use it to attract the world, and become a destination.

It should not be just a consortium of attractions, but one that generates economic gains that trickle down.

You must transform those attractions to a destination. Before people will come and spend their money in the attraction in the destination you have created. There will be a place to sleep, place to eat, place to recreate, all weaved around that particular attraction.

If you combine all the natural attractiveness we have in Africa; from North, to East, West and Central Africa, all the other continents put together cannot compete with us.

There is really nothing they have that we do not have and even more.

Are you talking about snow? We have plenty of locations. Go to Lesotho, go to South Africa.

If you want the best of the best of reefs in the Atlantic Ocean, you find those that scuba dive. If you are interested in beaches, Nigeria alone has 854.4 kilometers of beachfront. Just Nigeria alone.

If you combine all these resources that we have on the continent as one unit, put the entire Africa in one single cup, and serve it to the world, nobody can compete with us.

And that was what Europe did. They created the unified Europe by issuing what they call a Schengen Visa. Once you get a Schengen Visa, you can visit all over, any part of Europe. When you have time, you Google it, you find out that Europe did collectively 747 million visitors in 2024. They are just about 10.1 million square kilometers of area with maximum 4-6 months of good weather.

What Africa needs to do is to come together as a one-unit to present Africa on a platter and create a gateway through which people of African descent, and lovers of Africa can connect with the continent seamlessly and we chose to use Nigeria.

We are approximately 923, 677, 000 km area and over 250 million people. We believe that we are in the right position, the biggest economy, $500 billion GDP. We are going in for $1 trillion GDP now.

We believe that if you combine all of these, you can call for people to connect with the continent.

All the activities happening in North Africa, South, East, West, Central Africa, come through Nigeria. Two locations will be the entry point Lagos and Abuja. You can come through Nigeria to any part of Africa; we have the deepest seaport at Lekki Port.

Let them land in Lekki, and from there, they go to the airport to any part of Africa they want to go to. We are the big brother, let us start acting like one. That is the idea of the IPADA initiative and this return is to happen on a daily basis. We have a programme laid out for the next five years. The reason we have a 5-year programme is for them to be able to book over a period of five years.

What is the focus of the initiative?

Our focus as the powerhouse of the continent of Africa is the people, hence we created this platform for the entire world to connect in Africa and we deserve that position.

That was why we went to the villa and President Bola Tinubu is the grand patron. He was gracious enough to give us the villa too, and informed all the ambassadors. We had about 36 different countries that came for the event, from the US, Jamaica, and from all over, to hear the good news.

The IPADA initiative concept happens on a regular basis. We are like farmers; after farming all year round, you do harvest and this harvesting is what we are doing for IPADA Initiative Celebration from November 29 to December 7, 2025. And we have the dates for the next five years. If you cannot come for this year, you come for next year. If you are busy next year, come one year free, between now and 2030.

The programmes are the same, and we are going to repeat and be expanding on an annual basis. So, the celebration is from November 29 to December 7, 2025, and we are jointly going to grow that together.

Are there feats achieved last year?

Now, when you talk about the benefits and achievements last year, it is unbelievable and that was the first. We had folks that wanted to build six cruise ships. We created a concept of from slave ships to cruise ships and luxurious airliners, that we focus more on prosperity.

Let’s stop registering wrong things and nursing animosity. Let’s focus now on prosperity. We are prosperous people. We are doing superbly well throughout the world, as Africans.

So, that is what we celebrate and not what happened 400 years ago. We are no longer interested in that. That was history. As a matter of fact, nobody alive today was part of that event of the past 400 years. We actually are the ones reminding the new generations of the former slave masters and that we were once slaves.

We need to get away from that. We need to focus more on the greatest engineers we have, the best doctors we have, the best lawyers we have, the different things we are doing that the whole world is marveling at. The fastest runner in the world, the number one footballer in the world. These are all the things that we celebrate with the IPADA Initiative.

So, we got a lot of inquiries from people from different parts of the world. We got an agreement signed between the government of Vanuatu to replicate the La Campagne in Vanuatu. We got an agreement signed between Rwanda. We got different MOUs, so almost six different MOUs were assigned because this is more practical, it is not just about singing and dancing. We got blossom retreats where accomplished men and women come to empower, educate and breathe into the younger ones.

The Taraba tourism development is part of the fallout of Ipada 2024 celebrations because we are building destinations, not just in Nigeria, but throughout Africa. It is an ecotourism heritage resort brand, the first-of-its-kind in Nigeria.

What are your expectations for this year’s celebration?

We use this opportunity to showcase all these natural resources that I have mentioned. And we expect that a lot of people will take advantage of this platform we have created. Let’s quickly begin the process of transforming our attractions to destinations. So, that would be our expectation.

So, we have a tremendous amount of tourism products and we believe that this year, we will quietly be exposing what we have to the world.

Through this celebration, we want them to ask, what are you guys celebrating? We want to tell them we are celebrating the rebirth of tourism destinations, creation of tourism products and creation of prosperity through tourism. That is what our focus is going to be about.

What are the logistics arrangements for the celebration this year?

Of course, you know, we have been at this for 41 years. So, we have a bit of experience when it comes to logistics.

We have BRT units, park and ride locations where people will pack their cars in Falomo, and they can jump in a bus or jump in a boat on the lagoon and move straight to the resort. It makes logistics a lot easier for us.

We have the cooperation of the government. But we have access to almost 50 BRT buses and to whatever numbers we need.

They will move from Tafawa Balewa Square Lagos (TBS) and there will be buses for those that want to use buses. We are concluding a plan now for chopper movement from the airport straight to the resort that takes only a few minutes to fly. So, logistics, very well taken care of.

Of course, you know, we have been doing the Africa International Music Festival for the past 8 years now, basically, we have a well-organised network for logistics.

What impact have you made selling into the Caribbean with your La Campagne Tropicana brand?

We always refer to the Caribbeans as the neck that connects the head to the body and the body being the larger part, which is the continent of Africa.

They had been Africans in diaspora. During the slave trade period, the Caribbeans served as the middle passage where our people who were slaves were kept, and from there, shipped to different parts of the world.

So, we decided that we need to establish the concept of Africa because a lot of them are disconnected from the continent. For the past 400 years, there has been less travel there. It is difficult because you have to go north to London, England, or different locations before you come south, and it is very expensive. So, we are totally torn apart.

The idea was to create a return through the Caribbeans, so that on a daily basis, we welcome our diaspora from there and help them to reconnect back to their roots because our mantra is ‘Let’s think Africa First’.

You have to come back to the continent psychologically first, before you come back physically. So, if we can put an African-themed resort in the Caribbeans that people who are used to traveling to the Caribbeans can come, experience and taste Africa. We believe from there, they can then connect to the continent of Africa. They can then see their people, taste the food, music, dance, from the five regions of Africa.

Once we are able to do that, we will have created a middle passage through which Africans and lovers of Africa in diaspora can connect with the continent, before they then cross over to the continent.

So, we created an African free trade zone there. Next year, we are replicating the La Campagne Tropicana Agro Ecotourism Heritage Resort Brand in the Caribbeans, though small scale, because they don’t have a lot of land in the Caribbeans.

We will educate them thoroughly about Africa and what Africa stands for; from our music, dance, way of life, they will taste it. We believe once they test it, they will see that it is beautiful and will then connect to the continent.