Ethiopia's growing religious tourism sector

As one of the world's oldest Christian countries, Ethiopia is becoming one of the newest hotbeds for faith-based tourism as recently reported by Reuter News Agency. With the country's goals to reach one million tourists annually by 2010, they see this achievement possible especially through religious tourism.

Here is one section of the Reuter's article:
"Legend has it that these churches were carved below ground at the end of 11th century and beginning of the 12th after God ordered King Lalibela to build churches the world had never seen, and dispatched a team of angels to help him.
"I’d be happy to welcome more tourists," said Mesganaw, a Christian Orthodox who has been a priest for 32 years. "I want people to know about Lalibela."
For centuries, devout Christians travelled by foot and donkey to see the churches perched in the northern highlands. The skulls and mummified remains of some lie even now in tombs chiselled deep into the cliff walls around one church, Beit Giorgis.
Today, the minivans of Americans, Britons and Chinese that motor along remote, winding highland passes suggest a growing number of foreign tourists are discovering what the pilgrims have always known. "What we’re witnessing is a revitalisation of the tourism sector in Ethiopia," Minister of Culture and Tourism Mahmoud Dirir told Reuters. Ethiopia boasts eight Unesco World Heritage Sites but decades of hunger, conflict and political instability have kept the country and its fabled palaces, obelisks and castles off the beaten track for most visitors to Africa.
Tourism represents a mere 2.5 per cent of its gross national product, something the government is keen to change. It has set the ambitious goal of attracting one million foreign visitors a year by 2010, quadrupling current figures. Religious tourism may prove to be the answer. "We are focusing on our comparative advantage, which is the diversity of the cultures of the Ethiopian people, and ... the faith aspect," Dirir said. Far from being a dead relic, Lalibela’s churches throng with local worshippers on any given day."

Click here to read the full article by Katie Nguyen, a writer for Reuter News Agency.