Amapiano Said To Be Contributing To Tourism In The Country. Since 2019, Amapiano has emerged commercially as one of Africa’s hottest exports. It’s the latest South African music genre to see its artists on the global stage, with streams outside of Sub-Saharan Africa growing more than 563% on Spotify in the past two years. And with over 920M global all time streams of Amapiano to date, it is looking likely that streams on the platform will hit 1 billion in July this year.
When Covid-19 hit, the tourism industry in South Africa realised that it was over-reliant on the overseas market, and it needed to restructure the way it did things as international travel was banned. The only way tourism can be sustained in South Africa is that it needs to cater to the domestic market first, and the African regional market.
The strengthening of domestic tourism, making tourism accessible and the cost structure are some of the things that will be discussed at a meeting with tourism businesses and the government next week, according to SA Tourism acting CEO Themba Khumalo.
He credited the amapiano music genre as one of the reasons the country was seeing an influx of, mostly, the African American community whom he said were coming into the country for the culture: “One of the reasons people travel to a destination is they are attracted to the way of life of that place. And, they want to go to that place to find the source of that culture that they are perceiving from a distance. One of our greatest exports right now is amapiano music.”
“So, when your music and your fashion influences the world, then the world travels to that country to find the source and why that country is so special and how they innovated in terms of the music and the culture. And right now, South Africa is red hot in terms of influence in the world. And that is why we find all the African American music producers and filmmakers travelling into South Africa to come and experience the amapiano movement,” said Khumalo.
