An Examination of Ghanaian Tourism Social Entrepreneurs in Progressing the Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

January 2015 commenced a compromising procedure by the General Assembly about the aftermath of the unachieved millennium development goals (MDGs), (UN, 2019). With less than ten years of action remaining, to ensure the achievement of these goals, there has been a call for action to mobilize funds, ensure national inclusion of the goals while strengthening and charging various stakeholders to achieve these goals by 2030 without leaving anyone behind (UN, 2019). Tourism, for the past decades has been known to provide quality jobs for ensuring economic and social growth, tackling poverty and ensuring environmental conservation (UNWTO, 2018). However, the negative impacts of tourism has made its positive contribution to the UNs SDGs difficult and raises a question as to whether tourism may indeed contribute to the SDGs (Boluk, 2019; Hall, 2019). Notably, social entrepreneurship and social entrepreneur were first identified in the literature on social change in the 1960s and 1970s but became much known in retort to the cumulative existing societal imbalances (Sheldon et al, 2017). “Social entrepreneurs have profound implications in the economic system: creating new industries, validating new business models, and allocating resources to neglected societal problems” (Santos, 2012, p. 335). This basic qualitative research is to understand in what ways tourism social entrepreneurs are progressing sustainable tourism and the sustainable development goals in Ghana. This article suggests that tourism through social entrepreneurship contributes immensely to sustainable tourism and the Sustainable Development Goals. This study found that tourism social entrepreneurs in Ghana, are engaged with the sustainable tourism along with the SDG 8: Decent work and economic growth, SDG4: Quality Education and SDG 5: Gender Equality. In their quest to ensure sustainability, social entrepreneurs in this study shed a light on the associated challenges with inadequate financial support serving as the most identifiable.