Does visa-free travel advance pan-African unity?

DW (English)

Ghana has just scrapped visa requirements for all Africans. Does this mean the dream of pan-African unity is finally within reach? And what about obstacles like high travel costs?

Transcript

00:00Ghana has removed its visa requirements for all Africans. That's a moment of hooray

00:06But wait, why do visas in Africa still exist? What is happening here is

00:13Essentially the insistence of the levying of a sort of visitation tax on people who choose to come into the country

00:20Rwanda, Seychelles, The Gambia and Benin have also waived visa requirements to promote free movement of Africans

00:27But for the average person, is it really as simple as packing a bag and jumping on a bus or a plane?

00:34Welcome to the flip side

00:36Yeah, African unity has long been a desire among pan-Africanist

00:40The African Union AU even has a free movement protocol. So why isn't it happening on a large scale?

00:47There is a fear that there will be insecurity

00:52To spread which can spread across the continent

00:55There is also the fear that they will lose revenue that they get from selling visas

01:01So is it also about money?

01:04Does it mean that countries like Ghana that remove visa fees will become poorer? If you take Seychelles for instance, for example

01:14After its adoption of free movement there had been

01:18an average of 7% increase in

01:22tourist arrivals and tourist revenue

01:25which helped to

01:27propel the economy

01:28From a low middle-income economy to a high middle-income

01:33economy. So visas are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to intra-Africa movement. The high travel cost within Africa

01:41Residence permit fees and the bribes some bureaucrats and border officials expect are still significant obstacles

01:49Many Africans living in Ghana are having to pay extortionate fees just to be here for a work permit

01:55One is required to pay a thousand dollars per year to be in Ghana. This is

02:00Encouraging people to look elsewhere. This is telling people that you cannot be here unless you are of a certain income bracket and

02:08This is by no means restricted to Ghana

02:10Did you see what happened to Wodemeyer, one of the biggest youtubers in Africa when he tried to get into Togo?

02:28Waiving visa requirements is great

02:31but if more countries sign up to that free movement protocol more Africans can still circulate within the continent and

02:39Lowering the cost of residence and work permits is an obvious plus because it would encourage skilled labor migration and

02:46economic integration and that's the flip side

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