Africa (Commonwealth) _ As more nations continue to remove visa restrictions and open their borders to other African nations, travel to African nations is expected to rise in 2024.
The majority of African nations significantly liberalized their visa policies in 2023; Rwanda and Kenya, together with the Gambia, Benin, and Seychelles, were the most recent to do away with the need for visas for all travelers from inside the continent.
In the first week of January 2024 alone, Kenya’s Immigration Department received over 10,000 applications for the new Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA), which permits foreign people to enter or exit the country by air. This is a result of the country’s shift to a visa-free system.
Immigration Principal Secretary Julius Bitok stated that the applications were being processed by the Immigration Department in accordance with each applicant’s supplied travel schedule. With the new system in place, Kenya anticipates more than doubling its annual tourism arrivals from 2 million to 5 million.
According to the 2023 Africa Visa Openness Index published by the African Development Bank, 50 nations have either maintained or increased their openness rankings. The surge in bilateral and sometimes even multilateral agreements to fully waive or reduce visa requirements has been blamed for the increase. The region’s nations are working more closely together in the New Year to support trade and tourism by encouraging people to travel freely within the continent.
The goal of “Africa We Want” must be realized via maintaining the momentum on visa opening up, according to African Development Bank group vice president Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade. Adopting lax visa regulations will not only make travel easier but also greatly increase cross-border investment, commerce in products and services, and prosperity for everybody.
The research claims that visa liberalization has significantly improved throughout the continent, even in regional groups like the East African Community and the Southern Africa Development Cooperation, which had minor declines in overall rankings in 2023.
Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, Angola, and Namibia are a few of the nations in the group that have made progress in welcoming more tourists. Angola extended its visa-free policy to a number of African nations in October of last year. That same year, in March, Botswana and Namibia decided to do away with the need for passports for inhabitants of their respective nations to traverse borders with only a national identity card.
Later in December, an agreement was made between Botswana and Zimbabwe that permits people of both countries to visit each other for up to 90 days annually without requiring a work permit, passport, or visa.
In addition to Kenya and Rwanda, whose residents no longer require visas, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have also decided to do away with the necessity for visas for each other’s nationals. South Sudan changed its policy to require a visa upon arrival for people from Burundi and Rwanda. This all provide more integration within the territory of the East Africa Community.
According to official government data from Kenya, South Africa, and Tanzania, there was an increase in the number of Africans visiting neighboring countries in 2023, indicating a greater willingness to welcome African travelers.
A poll by Kenya’s Tourism Research Institute showed African nationals visiting Kenya in 2023 taking up a share of 42.19 per cent in 2023, compared to 34.47 per cent for European, 11 per cent for North America and 9 per cent for Asian nationals, respectively.
According to figures from Tanzania’s National Bureau of Statistics for 2023, between January and August, Kenya accounted for 128,753 of all African arrivals. Burundi (69,505), Zambia (38,394), Rwanda (37,269), and Uganda (28,594) followed. Kenya had more arrivals during this time period (84,541) than the United States of America and France combined (72,009). More people arrived from Burundi than from Germany (57,798), the UK (51,505), or Italy (51,056).
Similar trends were seen in South Africa, where data from Statistics South Africa indicates that, despite negative attitudes toward other African nationals, a mentality known locally as xenophobia, tourists from the rest of Africa constituted a significant 75.8% of all arrivals, or 3.6 million tourists, between January and July 2023.
Zimbabwe and Kenya were the two countries in Africa that stood out for their exceptional growth. Over the year under examination, Kenya had a 110.2% rise in tourist visits compared to 2022, while Zimbabwe experienced an astounding 115.6% increase, totaling 1.2 million visitors.
Another study indicates that in 2024, there would still be a strong demand for leisure travel throughout Africa. Nine of Africa’s ten major domestic leisure travel markets are expected to have higher levels of domestic travel spending in 2024 compared to 2019. This is according to the WTM Global Travel Report.
According to WTM, Egypt will continue to be the top destination for luxury travel receipts, with incoming leisure spending predicted to boost the country’s GDP by $12.2 billion.
