• SME Market Access Program
• SME Access to Finance
• Clean Energy Solutions
• Training and Facilitation
• Project Design and Strategy

Private Sector Competitiveness Program in Lesotho

Country and region: Lesotho, Africa Region

Project date: 12/18/2007

Client: World Bank; Lesotho Ministry of Trade, Industry, Cooperatives and Marketing

WHL Consulting was contracted to work in Lesotho with the Private Sector Competitiveness Project to conduct a content collection exercise and market readiness product audit. This project was a pilot to test the methodology development by WHL Consulting to rank products in terms of their market readiness (their readiness to be listed and sold directly to the international independent travel market). The work in Lesotho was the first time that a Market Readiness Assessment was undertaken on a destination level. The study was delivered to the Lesotho Tourism Development Corporation, the Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Culture, the Maloti-Drakensburg Project and the Lesotho Council for Tourism whom were extremely pleased with the results. In addition each of the participating tourism enterprises received a CD-ROM with digital photos, English language copy and sample brochures.

WHL Consulting returned to Lesotho in January 2007 to pilot test the Market Access Training Seminars in their full 2-day format for the first time and to build an e-commerce website for the country of Lesotho. The training seminars were run with great success in Maseru, Buthe-Buthe and Quting. The site took quite a few months to build due to the remote nature of Lesotho, but the final outcome of the program was the first e-commerce site specifically promoting Lesotho as its own destination: http://www.travel-lesotho.com/


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