By Onyekachi Victoria Philip
The second product in Otunba Wanle Akinboboye’s 52 Tourism Products was the Youth African Tourism Expedition (YATE) which was reportedly launched in October 2023, immediately after DNERP, the Diaspora Nigeria Economic Recovery Programme.
What is YATE?
YATE stands for Youth African Tourism Expedition.
It was designed primarily for young people aged 15-40, including:
- Undergraduates
- Young business executives
- Young tourism entrepreneurs
- Tourism enthusiasts
- Other young people interested in travel, recreation and African experiences
The central idea was to make young people experience tourism practically rather than only learn about it in classrooms.
According to Otunba Wanle Akinboboye, Nigeria’s tourism industry needs a new generation of people who understand hospitality, recreation, travel and tourism entrepreneurship early enough to eventually become operators and investors.
The problem YATE was created to solve which he identified a generational problem:
His argument was essentially that today’s tourism infrastructure and businesses were largely created by previous generations, while young Nigerians were not receiving enough practical exposure to the industry.
He therefore wanted to create what could be described as a practical tourism education system.YATE was designed to let young people travel, participate, play, interact, explore destinations and experience tourism businesses firsthand.
The programme therefore sits somewhere between tourism, education, recreation and entrepreneurship.
That is one of the things that makes YATE different from an ordinary youth excursion.
How YATE was supposed to work
The original concept involved creating a camp in an eco-friendly, African-themed environment.
Young people would combine recreation with team-building and tourism experiences.
Activities mentioned in the original launch included:
- Swimming
- Aim-the-basket games
- Catapulting
- Table tennis
- Snooker
- Live roasting and grilling
- Yam and plantain preparation
- Barbecue
- Team bonding activities
- Other recreational activities
The intention was to create an environment where young people could have fun while simultaneously being exposed to African tourism and hospitality.
YATE as a business opportunity for young people
This is one of the most important parts of the product that can easily be missed.
YATE was not designed only for young people to consume tourism.
It was also designed to teach them how to make money from tourism.
Otunba Wanle Akinboboye said young tourism entrepreneurs could use YATE as a template and participate commercially. This allowed registered entrepreneurs to approach schools and engage students for YATE programs, with opportunities to earn commissions.
That makes YATE a tourism entrepreneurship model, rather than simply a youth recreational programme.
In other words, there were potentially two beneficiaries:
The young tourist
gets exposure, recreation and education.The young tourism entrepreneur gets a business model that can be packaged and sold.
Why schools are important to YATE
Schools and universities are particularly important to the concept.
The programme was designed to allow tourism entrepreneurs to take the experience directly to students and introduce them to tourism from an early age.
This is significant because the tourism industry needs more than tourists.
It needs:
- Tour operators
- Travel consultants
- Hospitality managers
- Event planners
- Tour guides
- Recreation specialists
- Destination marketers
- Content creators
- Chefs
- Hotel operators
- Transport providers
- Tourism investors
- Tourism policymakers
YATE therefore attempts to create future participants in the tourism economy, not just future tourists.
The youth-restiveness dimension
There was also a social-development argument behind YATE.
Akinboboye linked productive recreation, travel and entrepreneurship with reducing youth restiveness.
The idea is that young people who have access to:
travel,positive recreation, social interaction, business opportunities may have healthier alternatives to idleness and destructive activities.
The product therefore has a youth-development dimension alongside its tourism objective.
YATE and the 52-product strategy
YATE makes more sense when viewed alongside the entire 52-product programme.The programme was announced as an effort to reveal one tourism product every week for 52 weeks, with the broader goal of stimulating Nigerian tourism and creating tourism businesses.
The first two products were deliberately different:
Product 1 — DNERP
Target: Diaspora Nigerians and friends of Nigeria
Focus: Tourism, diaspora engagement and economic participation.
Product 2 — YATE
Target: Young people
Focus: Tourism experience, education and entrepreneurship.
This suggests that Akinboboye was not simply creating random tourism packages. He was attempting to identify different tourism markets and build products around them.
YATE’s place in the wider tourism ecosystem
A later analysis of the 52 products identified YATE as one of the products aimed particularly at the youth market as young people constitute an important segment of international tourism and increasingly influence the popularity of destinations.
Young travellers are not only consumers.
They are also:
- Social-media promoters
- Destination influencers
- Future investors
- Future tourism professionals
- Future business owners
- Repeat travellers
If a young person develops a positive relationship with a destination early, that relationship can potentially continue for decades.
What happened after the launch?
The 52-product programme continued beyond YATE.
By January 2024, reports showed that 12 products had already been revealed between October and December 2023, with YATE occupying the second position.
What is the latest update on YATE?
Interestingly, YATE has not disappeared from the public narrative.
A recent August 24TH 2026 report describes YATE as an ongoing youth-tourism initiative designed to expose young people to tourism, recreation, African culture and entrepreneurship. The report again identifies it as the second product in the 52-product programme.
This is important because it shows that, unlike a product that was announced once and forgotten, YATE is still being presented as part of Akinboboye’s current tourism-development philosophy in 2026.
Its current positioning is particularly focused on building the next generation of African tourism entrepreneurs.
The deeper significance of YATE
If DNERP answers:
“How do we reconnect the diaspora with Nigeria and turn that relationship into economic activity?”
YATE answers:
“Who will build the next generation of Nigeria’s tourism industry?”
And the answer is:
The youths.
That makes YATE a form of human-capital development for tourism.It is attempting to ensure that young Nigerians do not only travel to tourism destinations but also learn how those destinations operate and how tourism can become a livelihood.