Africa Visa Openness Index 2024: mixed progress with many challenges lying ahead

The number of African countries offering e-visas has risen from 9 in 2016 to 26 in 2024, the latest addition of the Africa Visa Openness Index (AVOI) has revealed, with Benin, The Gambia, Rwanda and the Seychelles ranked the highest in visa openness, with Africans requiring no visas to enter these countries.
The 2024 Africa Visa Openness Index, which is supported by the African Union and run by the African Development Bank Group (AfDB), measured the extent to which each country in Africa was open to visitors from other countries on the continent. The growing trend — from 17% of all African countries in 2016 to 44% of them in 2024 that offer e-visas for other Africans — is cautiously welcomed by experts who say that this can break cross-border barriers by streamlining travel processes and thus can support economic growth under frameworks like the AfCFTA. “E-visas are one step towards achievement of regional integration and free movement (of people)… without free movement of people, there is no free movement of goods,” Tanatsiwa Dambuza, a Zimbabwean researcher, said.
But other countries, such as Kenya that in 2024 introduced a new visa system requiring electronic pre-authorization, have slipped in their rankings in this year’s AVOI. According to the AfCFTA report, Kenya’s “requirement for ETAs prior to travel for most travelers from other African countries lowered [its] score” — it dropped 17 places to 46th out of Africa’s 54 nations. Looking at the overall picture on the continent, the report notes that the “introduction of ETAs by some countries added additional layers of requirements to the traveller and did not facilitate ease of movement”. The fact that “Africans continue to require visas for the most part to enter other African countries is one of the most profound contradictions to the continent’s aspirations on regional integration,” AfDB director Joy Kategekwa said.