Is borderless travel in Africa possible?
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Hi guys, it's Hanigel Bart here and welcome to this episode of What In The World from the BBC World Service. Now you'd think that the more money you'd have, the easier it would be to travel, right? Well, that is not necessarily true. And even Africa's second richest man, Aliko Dangote from Nigeria, has complained that he's had to get 35 different visas just to travel around Africa. So why is it so hard?

There are some arrangements within parts of Africa where people can travel visa-free, but generally, looking through social media, all I can see are complaints about the cost and logistics. So today, we are going to find out what it would take to create borderless travel in Africa. ♪

Here in the studio with me to talk this through is Daniel Dadzi, BBC journalist. Hey, Daniel. Hi, Hannah. Hey, hey. So you are Ghanaian. Have you travelled around a lot around the continent? A few times. What's your experience been like? It's easy in some bits and almost impossible in other parts. So within West Africa, which is where I've done the bulk of my travel, it's quite simple to move, if you're speaking of moving by air.

That is, you're not going to go through any land borders. You're just going to use your passport, go from airports to airports. It's quite simple. In some other places, it's difficult. I remember, this wasn't me personally, but last year I interviewed a group of people who drove from Accra to London. And they mentioned how they were able to use their national identification card for Ghana to drive from Ghana to Mauritania, which is the last West African country. But entering Mauritania,

was very difficult. They had to change border crossing points. Then they were told that they don't have the right documentation. It was very difficult. And from that point right up until they got through Europe into London, it was a different sort of arrangement to cross one border after the other. I found that it's quite simple if you travel by air, but in Africa it's very expensive to travel by air. Why is it generally so complicated?

I think that it's because as a continent, we've not yet made those agreements on a diplomatic level, on a geopolitical level, that would make it easy for people to move around in that way. So the continent is sectioned off, if I can use that expression. There's ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States. There's the East African Community. There's SADC, which is a Southern African Community. And with

Within these blocks, it's relatively easy. But when you're trying to cross from one block to another, it really depends on that country and their rules. The truth is that there are a number of countries like Kenya who have opened their borders to all Africans to enter. But there is still a number of rules, even if it's like visa on arrival. In fact, AFDB did a study last year.

in 2023 and they found that for 46% of country-to-country travel within Africa, some sort of visa is required. That makes it more difficult for persons. We're actually going to be talking about Kenya a bit later because it's a really interesting case study, as it were. But now, let's hear more from Zubeda Abdelrahman, who is a Ghanaian blogger. I've been to 20 countries so far and I would say out of that, only about three or four of them have been within Africa. Mostly because travel within Africa is very expensive, surprisingly.

I could get a ticket to Germany for $600 whereas if I wanted to go to a tourist hotspot in Africa, like let's say South Africa, I have to spend about $1100 on a ticket. The price gap is very big. There's always the option to go via road but that doesn't seem very safe and I see a lot of horror stories from people who have gotten to the border and there's been an issue or being robbed on the way and it just seems like a bit of a risk.

So I would rather just fly wherever I want to go. With regards to visa restrictions, I would say it's definitely easier to travel within Africa because to leave Africa, the visa requirements are a bit stringent. However, let me use Europe for example. If I got one Schengen visa to a European country, I could use that to explore all of Europe.

And even that I could go via train. Whereas in Africa, because I have a visa exemption for some places, but not everywhere. And there's no one train system that takes people through countries. It makes even exploring the continent very hard. Not just the fact that we don't have visas to certain places and the tickets are expensive, but it's not very convenient either. So like she said, it's also a question of infrastructure. Yes, it is. And...

You know, the mere fact that there are very few pancontinental carriers that can take you from country to country without transiting through another country. Like, for instance, if I'm traveling by Kenya Airways, I need to transit through Nairobi. It's convenient for the airlines to do that, but...

But as a result of that, it's a bit more difficult for you to map travel via Kenya Airways between Ghana and let's say Morocco or Ghana and let's say Egypt because you're adding a lot more flight hours. So the African Union wants to solve some of these problems and they want to remove restrictions and enable freedom of movement. They actually signed a protocol in 2018 to do this, but it hasn't been ratified. It hasn't been made official by many countries. What's the hold up?

So in terms of the African Union, there are lots of plans that always seem to be percolating. So at the moment, we do have the majority of about 33 countries that have signed up for it. But remember that the continent is...

It's quite a complex continent. There's a lot of geopolitics to consider. There's a lot of local dynamics to consider. Currently, Algeria and Morocco border each other, but Algeria and Morocco don't allow direct flights between each other. That's nuts. Yes. Right. Because of the Western Sahara political deadlock between the two countries. It's actually even almost jeopardized football tournaments there at the beginning of last year.

You also have things like the MPOCs which hit DRC. They had to close their borders. So it's moving is what the diplomats tell us. But there are some very real challenges that has to be solved before this is built on top of it. The African Union has set an agenda for 2063. Seems like a long way off. I know. I know. I mean, if I wanted to have a holiday in the sun, I won't wait till 2063.

You'll be around for a while. Exactly, exactly. But apparently it's not only going to facilitate free movement, it's also going to facilitate rights to work and residency across the continent. So hopefully that works.

And as part of these plans, there is also a plan for an African Union passport that was meant to roll out in 2020. What happened to that? To be fair, when it was adopted in February 2019, no one knew that COVID was going to happen in 2020. So it's really a question of prioritising by these leaders and moving as quickly as possible. It's part of this big plan that by 2063 we are going to see these. And that's according to the AU's website. I'm going to be a grandma by then.

The European Union has the Schengen area. There's Mercosur in South America that lets like some South American countries have free travel, ASEAN in Asia. And now the UN actually wants to come and get involved in this to try and implement borderless travel in Africa. Yeah, so the UN has a big agenda for tourism. It's called the Agenda for Africa 2030. And it's

is being championed by the World Tourism Organization of the UN. So I had the pleasure of speaking to the executive director of UN tourism. Her name is Natalia Bayona. And she did admit that a lot depends on the diplomatic efforts of the local governments, but she gave herself some bold deadlines. When it comes to visa facilitation,

UN tourism has some guidelines to help the countries to open the way. This is not only a job,

that we have to do in tourism. This is connected with foreign affairs and diplomacy, and this is connected as well with Ministry of Defense. If they together are aligned, normally speaking, visa openness come. So of course the visa goes away, but this is a hard job. I see it as a midterm, long-term strategy is at least seven years to 10 years from now.

Why? Because it's not only about Africa, it's about the geopolitics. In time of war, everyone wants to get closer and everyone wants to close the borders. But maybe seven to ten years is my vision. What are some of the benefits that visa-free travel would bring to Africans? The first thing is money. The first thing is money. Africa gets only about 2.5% of the global tourism revenue if you're counting international tourism receipts.

A lot of that is because people within Europe are able to travel to Europe. People within America are able to travel to the Americas. And so if you boost domestic tourism, you're getting a lot of money back. It also facilitates business because travel within countries is not just about going to visit. There's medical tourism where people go and visit hospitals regularly.

pay a lot of money for that. There is also business tourism where people go, they set up farms in other parts of the world. They set up businesses in other parts of their countries. Last week, a week or two ago, I interviewed a

A young fintech CEO who has raised $100 million and he was speaking very, very boldly about moving to countries like Kenya, moving to the rest of the continent. Someone like that is going to need to be able to go to Kenya freely. He's in Nigeria.

He's going to be able to. And one of the reasons why he picks Kenya, first of all, is how easy Kenya makes it for him. You understand? And the kind of, of course, if you're counting the socioeconomic environments that they have as well. And it's not just Kenya, as you say, there are a couple of other countries in Africa that have scrap visas. So there's Gambia, Benin, Rwanda, Seychelles.

But Kenya scrapped all visas for African nationals at the end of last year. So now let's find out how that is working from our BBC reporter in Nairobi, Jewel Kiriungi. In January, the government of Kenya announced that tourists would no longer need a visa in order to enter the country. Now, the move was an attempt to promote Kenya as a tourist destination, especially by attracting business travellers.

According to the country's tourism board, it says that it hopes to get some 5.5 million visitors every year in the next four years. Previously, visas would cost an upward of about $50. However, with the new policy, almost everyone, including some countries whose citizens previously enjoyed free entry, must pay about $30 for an electronic travel authorization, which is also known as an ETA.

So the visitors who apply for the ETA must do so online at least three days before they travel and pay the $30 as a processing fee. Now, part of the new requirements also state that younger children who are less than 16 years old also have to pay for the ETA and they didn't have to do this previously. Only travelers from the East African community are exempted from this fee. Now, President Ruto has been saying

calling for a borderless Africa. He has urged countries to ditch visas and encourage the free movement of people and goods across the continent. But critics say that the new policy does the opposite.

Daniel, what are some of the arguments that people give against free travel in Africa? Yeah, I mean, you go to stronger economies across the continent and there always is the case that, you know, this anti-migration or anti-immigration wave that we've seen in the West is also present in some countries on the continent. People make the case that, you

Others will come and take our jobs. People make the case that there's a burden on, you know, the local systems. You know, there's a strong sentiment recorded in countries like South Africa, for instance. But I think the beginning of this conversation or the premise of this conversation really doesn't go all the way to giving everyone rights to work everywhere. Because the big agenda or the big targets for 2063 includes radicalism.

right to live and right to work. But for most of the countries where you don't require visas to travel to in Africa now, just for a limited period of about 90 days to about six months, you can enter the country, you can visit the country. But if we were counting as in the number of countries that will allow you to live there and the number of countries that will allow you to work there, that 46% figure will be even lower. Is there anything that you would have done differently in your...

you know, growing up in Ghana, if you had had completely visa-less travel? I mean, if I had visa-less travel across the continent, I mean,

I'm pretty sure that I would have spent a lot more time, you know, particularly in my late teens and 20s. I would have spent a lot more time looking at other parts of the continent that I'd always heard about. I was always curious about North Africa. I was always curious about East and Southern Africa. But thankfully, I'd already done a bit of travel to Nigeria, La Cote d'Ivoire, a few countries in West Africa by the time I was hitting my 30s. So yeah, not too much to regret. Daniel, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thanks a lot, Hannah.

And thank you for joining us. Before I go, I just want to tell you about some of the other stories that we have covered on What In The World, like why buying a house feels impossible if you're young and single, or how climate change is affecting pro sports. You can find those and all of our other episodes wherever you get your BBC podcasts. I'm Hannah Gelbart. This is What In The World from the BBC World Service, and we'll see you next time. Bye.