African Tourism Board Chairman Cuthbert Ncube Dies

Cuthbert Simphiwe Ncube, chairman of the African Tourism Board (ATB), died this morning, according to word received by eTurboNews from his daughters Nothemba and Thabisile. He was a South African entrepreneur who spent his final years pushing for a unified African voice in global tourism sales and policy.

His death removes the central figure from an organization that formally launched in Cape Town during World Travel Market Africa in April 2019, and which declared itself open and operational under his leadership in August 2019.

Who was Cuthbert Ncube?

Before the ATB, Ncube built a business career in South Africa. He ran Kwela Fleet Management, a transportation and chauffeur services company in Pretoria, and held hospitality-related ventures including Golden Feathers in Cape Town.

His entry into international tourism diplomacy came in 2013, when he became Regional Vice President for Africa within the Affiliate Members structure of the UN World Tourism Organization, now UN Tourism. He was re-elected in 2015 and 2017. That role gave him the government and private-sector relationships he later carried into the ATB.

How did the African Tourism Board begin?

The ATB started in 2018 as a marketing initiative launched by eTurboNews publisher Juergen T. Steinmetz, aimed at giving African destinations greater visibility in a global marketplace where individual countries promoted themselves with limited resources.

Its founding group of directors and supporters included:

• Dr. Taleb Rifai, former Secretary-General of the UN World Tourism Organization
• Alain St. Ange, former Minister of Tourism of Seychelles
• Dr. Walter Mzembi, former Minister of Tourism and Foreign Affairs of Zimbabwe
• Moses Vilakati, then Minister of Tourism for the Kingdom of Eswatini
• Dr. Peter Tarlow, the Texas-based tourism safety and security expert

Steinmetz wrote that the original concept was "relatively straightforward": a media-driven marketing platform connecting African destinations with the global travel trade.

What did Ncube change?

According to Steinmetz, Ncube saw beyond the marketing brief. "Where we had initially envisioned a marketing platform, Cuthbert envisioned a tourism board that could help bring an entire continent together," he wrote.

Ncube pushed to convert the initiative into an African-led organization with African ownership, arguing the continent needed cooperation among governments, private businesses, entrepreneurs and communities — not just promotion by outside intermediaries. He wanted Africa to participate in global tourism "not merely as a destination being marketed by others, but as an active partner shaping the industry's future."

The task was structurally hard: coordinating 54 internationally recognized countries with different political systems, economies, cultures and tourism priorities. The ATB went through organizational changes and challenges, and not every initiative met its ambitions. But Ncube's advocacy drew attention to destinations seeking visibility, including South Sudan and Lesotho, and he promoted investment, cultural exchange and community participation across the continent.

His pitch consistently framed tourism as economic empowerment rather than arrivals arithmetic. He spoke about opportunities for young people, women, entrepreneurs and communities that had not always benefited from international tourism development.

What happens now?

Ncube's passing leaves open the question of who champions African tourism cooperation next. The structural challenges he named remain unresolved: international air connectivity, visa policies, investment levels, infrastructure gaps, thin marketing resources and the distribution of tourism revenue to local communities.

For sellers of African travel, his death comes as the continent's destinations still search for collective market positioning. Steinmetz's closing assessment framed the succession issue plainly: "His dream was not completed. Perhaps dreams of this scale are never truly completed. They are carried forward by others."