Diplomats need to be more innovative and find new ways of practicing their craft.
This was the underlying message of South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa during the 2022 Heads of Missions conference titled Positioning South Africa’s Diplomacy to Advance our Domestic Priorities, held on 7 April 2022 in Pretoria.
As a practical step towards more innovative diplomacy, Ramaphosa stated:
We need to adapt to digital diplomacy and host targeted seminars to sell South Africa.
This annual conference on South African diplomacy centered around three priority areas for innovative diplomacy:
1. Attracting tourism, trade, and investment by using innovative tools and approaches
2. Strengthening people-to-people relations for cultivating tolerance and cultural understanding, with a focus on youth development programmes
3. Developing public diplomacy through social media and other advanced tools and approaches
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