Joseph Fomunung

Mr. Joseph S Fomunung, President & CEO of Business International Consulting LLC possesses three decades of experience in the tourism industry, particularly the ecotourism subsector. During the past 32 years, among other activities, he was the regional boss overseeing Travel & Tourism development in Cameroon in three of ten regions. He was appointed point man on ecotourism in Cameroon”s Ministry of Environment and Forestry, serving three years. Beyond this high-profile role and function, he has been invited by both foreign governments and private sector tourism organizations to either chair ecotourism committees or present professional papers on tourism development. Mr. Fomunung’s expertise led him to travel to 14 countries across four continents over 25 years, dealing with sustainable tourism development. He has chaired or presented papers from Jerusalem, Israel, Fukushima, Japan, and Mazatlan, Mexico.

After the 1987 Brundtland Commission Report on Our Common Future, Fomunung quickly established himself as an expert in Ecotourism. As he states, “I immediately saw ecotourism as that tool that could be used to create jobs and grow the economy without depleting the environmental nourishing base of the tourism industry.”

He founded an NGO in the 1980s called Greenspace, with headquarters in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé. Unfortunately, being well ahead of the curve, the organization didn’t last. Fomunung has been a consultant to the Africa 2000 Project, a United Nations development program for Africa in the 90s, the WWF-Cameroon Program office, and the European Union Yaoundé Office, contributing as an economic writer on trade and development issues in the EEC-ACP magazine, The Courier. He was also the pioneering professor of Ecotourism at Cameroon’s premier University of Yaoundé. Mr. Fomunung studied Economics, Development Studies, and International Relations at Indiana State University and the University of Wisconsin. He received further specialized training in Brugge, Belgium.