Africa CDC and WHO say countries should avoid unnecessary restrictions on travel and trade and focus instead on surveillance, laboratories, preparedness and cross-border coordination. If that principle is scientifically sound, should tourism also be part of the conversation?
KINSHASA/BUNIA — There is a sentence at the end of the latest joint Ebola statement from Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization that deserves considerably more attention from the global travel and tourism industry.
“Africa CDC and WHO continue to advise against unnecessary restrictions on travel or trade. Countries should instead strengthen surveillance, laboratory capacity, preparedness and cross-border coordination.”
That recommendation comes despite a grave situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
As of August 4, according to the joint statement, DRC had reported 3,973 confirmed cases and 1,801 deaths. Ituri accounted for almost 90% of confirmed cases, contact follow-up remained below the operational target, and treatment capacity was under extraordinary pressure. Africa CDC and WHO say that in some parts of eastern DRC the outbreak is outpacing the response. (World Health Organization)
Nobody should minimize those numbers.
But neither should the international community ignore the second half of the public-health message: closing borders and indiscriminately restricting movement are not substitutes for disease control.
And that raises an uncomfortable question for tourism.
If unnecessary travel restrictions are not recommended by the world’s leading international and African public-health institutions, does that principle include tourists?
The short answer is: in principle, yes — but that does notmean WHO is telling tourists to vacation in Bunia, Ituri or other outbreak areas.
That distinction matters enormously.
WHO is not saying “travel anywhere”
WHO’s position is considerably more sophisticated than either “Congo is safe” or “close Congo.”
The organization assesses the risk inside DRC as very high, the risk to countries sharing land borders with affected countries as high, but the risk to the rest of Africa and globally as low.
Its recommendations concentrate on identifying and controlling the people who actually present an epidemiological risk.
Suspected, probable and confirmed Ebola cases and their contacts should not undertake international travel except for appropriate medical evacuation. Exit screening, exposure questionnaires, temperature checks, cross-border surveillance and information-sharing should be strengthened. WHO has also advised considering postponement of mass gatherings until transmission is interrupted.
That is targeted risk management. It is very different from treating every person who crosses the DRC border as though he or she were infected.
Tourism cannot claim exemption from public health. A tourist is a traveler. If exposed, symptomatic or identified as a contact, the same rules must apply.
But neither does being a tourist automatically create an Ebola exposure. That distinction is precisely where the tourism industry needs to enter the discussion.
Then there is the United States
The contrast is striking.
The U.S. State Department currently classifies the entire Democratic Republic of the Congo at Level 4: Do Not Travel, citing health, crime, unrest, terrorism and kidnapping. More extraordinarily, because of Ebola, U.S. citizens and nationals who have been in DRC during the previous 21 days are currently prevented from boarding commercial flights to the United States and must remain outside DRC for 21 days before flying home.
The United Kingdom takes a more geographically differentiated approach, but its warnings remain extensive. It advises against all travel to Ituri, North and South Kivu and several other provinces, while warnings also cover specific areas elsewhere. The UK notes that commercial flights are no longer operating from Goma and Bukavu airports following attacks.
These governments are entitled — and obligated — to make their own security and health assessments. But the difference between those national advisories and the position of WHO and Africa CDC exposes a question tourism has encountered repeatedly since COVID-19:
When does a necessary health precaution become an unnecessarily broad restriction that causes enormous economic damage without delivering proportional public-health benefits?
DRC is not one destination
This is especially relevant in a country the size of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
DRC is approximately the size of Western Europe. A crisis in Ituri does not automatically describe daily conditions in Kinshasa, Lubumbashi, Kolwezi or every potential tourism area thousands of kilometers away.
This does not make those other places automatically safe. Crime, weak infrastructure, political instability, inadequate emergency services and transport difficulties remain genuine problems. But destination risk should be geographically intelligible.
When the international headline becomes simply “Ebola in Congo”, geography disappears. So does tourism.
What tourism infrastructure actually exists?
DRC is hardly a conventional mass-tourism destination. That may ultimately become one of its greatest opportunities.
Its tourism assets are exceptional: the Congo River, one of the world’s great waterways; extraordinary biodiversity; rainforests; primates; volcanoes; music, art and Congolese cuisine; Kinshasa’s cultural energy; and national parks possessing wildlife experiences that few destinations on Earth can duplicate.
There is also a functioning — if uneven — hospitality economy.
Kinshasa has international-standard accommodation, restaurants, business-tourism infrastructure and international air links. Private investment has not stopped. Congolese hotel developer CHIC says three Novotel properties are operating in the country and an ibis Styles opened in Kinshasa in February 2026, evidence that investors continue to see long-term demand in the country’s commercial centers.
The World Travel & Tourism Council continues to measure DRC’s travel and tourism economy, including employment, GDP contribution, international and domestic visitor spending and investment.
Yet tourism development runs into the same structural barriers facing almost every other industry.
A 2026 U.S. government commercial assessment identifies poor roads, rail and ports, inadequate electricity, sparse telecommunications infrastructure, expensive logistics, regulatory unpredictability and insecurity — particularly in North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri — among the country’s major operating challenges.
For tourism, add limited emergency medical capacity, difficult overland transportation, expensive internal logistics, complicated insurance considerations and the need for knowledgeable local partners.
This is not presently a destination for an inexperienced traveler improvising an itinerary after landing.
And what about Virunga?
Virunga illustrates both the staggering potential and brutal fragility of Congolese tourism.
Africa’s oldest national park offers mountain gorillas, volcanoes and one of the world’s most extraordinary concentrations of biodiversity. Its tourism infrastructure includes lodges and tented camps.
But the current situation demonstrates why marketing must never get ahead of operational reality.
The official Visit Virunga website currently carries a notification saying gorilla and Nyiragongo treks are closed until further notice, even though other sections of the site continue to display accommodation, trekking and package information. Anyone considering travel should therefore obtain direct confirmation from park authorities rather than interpreting an online itinerary as evidence that a particular activity is operating.
That is tourism resilience in its most difficult form: preserving the destination, its people, conservation capability and tourism infrastructure so there is an industry left when conditions permit normal operations again.
Who is still going to Congo?
They exist. They are not necessarily conventional leisure tourists.
Foreign business travelers, mining-sector personnel, development specialists, humanitarian workers, journalists, diplomats, researchers, members of the Congolese diaspora and experienced independent travelers continue to move through parts of DRC.
Recent online discussions provide anecdotal evidence of exactly that pattern. In June, a European traveler described an eight-day work trip to Kinshasa; another traveler reported completing a journey from Kinshasa toward western DRC earlier in the year while acknowledging that eastern Congo was unrealistic. In July, another contributor described undertaking regular professional missions to DRC from Belgium.
These anecdotes should notbe interpreted as proof of safety. They demonstrate something different: a Level 4 advisory does not mean that every hotel is empty, every aircraft arrives without passengers, or every foreigner has disappeared.
Life and travel continue. The question is how to manage them responsibly.
Tourism resilience cannot mean pretending there is no crisis
There is a dangerous temptation in destination marketing to interpret “resilience” as “please keep coming.” That would be irresponsible in the present circumstances.
Bunia and the most severely affected communities need epidemiologists, nurses, laboratory capability, ambulances, treatment beds, secure humanitarian access and resources reaching frontline teams — not adventurous tourists seeking bragging rights.
The first obligation is to stop transmission and save lives.
But resilience also means preventing a localized or regional crisis from unnecessarily destroying livelihoods in places where the epidemiological situation does not justify blanket shutdowns.
- A hotel employee in Kinshasa does not become epidemiologically dangerous because Ebola transmission is occurring far away in Ituri.
- A restaurant, tour operator, driver or hotel elsewhere in a country should not automatically become collateral damage because international audiences cannot distinguish one province from another.
This was one of tourism’s painful lessons from COVID-19. It should not have to be learned again.
Surveillance instead of stigma
Africa CDC and WHO are pointing toward a different model.
- Detect disease earlier.
- Trace contacts.
- Build laboratory capacity.
- Screen appropriately.
- Exchange information across borders.
- Equip healthcare workers.
- Prepare neighbouring countries.
- Communicate honestly with communities.
And intervene against the people and movements presenting identifiable epidemiological risk rather than treating an entire country — or continent — as contaminated.
Uganda offers compelling evidence.
In Uganda, after recording 20 confirmed cases and two deaths, the country declared the end of its outbreak on July 28. Africa CDC and WHO credited early detection, contact tracing, coordinated action, community engagement and cross-border surveillance among the critical factors.
That is what resilience looks like. It is infrastructure, not slogans.
Where is tourism’s emergency architecture?
This is where the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre (GTRCMC) should have a role.
The Jamaica-headquartered GTRCMC was created specifically to help destinations prepare for, manage and recover from crises and identifies pandemic resilienceamong its areas of work. Its services include crisis communications, policy advice, research, training, monitoring, data analytics and preparedness. It also maintains an African presence. DRC presents almost a textbook case for such an intervention.
What if GTRCMC, working with Africa CDC, WHO, DRC tourism and health authorities, airlines, hotels, tour operators and neighboring countries, developed a Tourism Resilience Protocol for Ebola-Affected Destinations?
It could translate epidemiological data into tourism-relevant geographic risk maps; establish protocols for hotels and tour operators; develop traveler communication standards; define procedures for suspected cases; train tourism workers; establish crisis-information channels for airlines and operators; and create objective criteria for suspending and restoring tourism activities.
Most importantly, it could help separate evidence-based caution from fear-based destination collapse.
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