South Africa in bid to increase intra-Africa travels

Kenya is among the African nations that would benefit from a new visa regime set to be introduced by South Africa in a bid to increase intra-Africa travels.

For long, the process of streamlining how Kenyans can easily access this document to travel has been met with a lot of hitches even after a series of meetings between President Uhuru Kenyatta and former SA President Jacob Zuma.

SA Tourism Minister Derek Hanekom has however revealed of an ongoing process to revise the country’s visa regime whose bid is to increase intra-Africa travel.

Hanekom, speaking on the sidelines of the Africa Travel Indaba Conference held in Durban, said the government has already divided countries into two categories: those that need visa and the ones that do not need.

For those that need, like Kenya, he said from next financial year, the government may introduce E-Visa. This will involve people applying for the document online then they will be issued once they land.

Henkom said while the decision to lift the visa requirement for some countries may seem arbitrary, it is usually justified by the relationship between the two countries and the benefit SA could gain.

For example, SA was forced to introduce visa requirement for New Zealand after the country also did the same hence visitors’ numbers went down by 24 per cent.

And when SA lifted visa requirement for Russia in 2016, numbers went up by 52 per cent in 2017.

“But I do not really understand why it (visa requirement) has not been lifted on other countries, especially for a country like Kenya,” said Hanekom.

When former SA President Jacob Zuma visited President Uhuru Kenyatta in October 2016, Kenyans were optsimistic that his presence will get rid of the current bottle necks in the visa application process.

Zuma instead said there were key underlying issues that had to be addressed before such a major development can be made.

However, Toursim Minister Hanekom said SA President Cyril Ramaphosa has taken keen in the visa issue as previously, he was the chair of the committee that was tasked with coming up with revisions to the country’s visa regime.

Hanekom further noted African nations should not just count on the visa changes to increase intra Africa travel. He said African countries should purpose to open up their skies with direct flights which will boost trade and tourism.

He alluded that the few direct flights could be the reason why majority of Africans find it easy to travel to Mauritius, Sychelles and other exotic places out of the continent for holidays.

“It is sad that to connect to some African countries one has to fly to Europe,” said Hanekom.