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The African solution to African travel: Put a stop to it, now!

Tuesday July 26 2016

So the African Union has introduced an African passport to ease travel by Africans in Africa. The exciting news found me in a francophone West African country I have long wanted to visit. Two previous attempts had ended in failure.

I could not go because my prospective hosts were not well informed about the visa application process. They applied too late. Except for nationals of some of its neighbours, Africans from countries where it does not have embassies must apply several weeks in advance if they are to stand a chance of being allowed in.

It has no embassy in any of the East African Community countries.

The reason why entry for many Africans is so difficult is, apparently, “security.” An official I bumped into gave me his explanation: “With all the insecurity around us, we have to be careful. Even France with all its resources is suffering. We don’t want to take chances.”

He mentioned Boko Haram and “the war in the Central African Republic”. It was all rather convenient, I thought.

At the time I made the first attempt to go there, there was no Boko Haram. The Central African Republic was peaceful. He was making excuses for good old red tape, it seemed to me.

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Anyway, for those of us who are not privileged to have this country’s embassies back home, visa applications are scrutinised and rejected or visas granted at the highest level of the pecking order within the relevant organ. The official told me it prevents abuse. And decisions are not made before one’s host has been asked to provide “supplementary information.”

Then the applicants have to sit back and wait to be summoned to pay the visa fees. And then they have to wait again until they receive a call announcing the outcome.

This time around, my would-be host, who had previously “messed up” and applied “just” two weeks before I was due to go, acted wisely: He applied in early May to make sure that, come July, we would have a decision, hopefully a positive one. I duly got my visa and flew out, imagining it would be plain sailing once I disembarked from the plane.

It wasn’t. I spent the best part of an hour and a half in a bat-infested and smelly part of the airport, sitting and waiting for my passport to turn up.

To keep calm, I took to watching in amusement as one paper-shuffling official after another paced up and down taking this or that document into and out of this or that office.

Eventually, I got my passport back. It was all rather sobering considering that our leaders talk endlessly about wanting to promote intra-Africa travel and tourism.

This experience is distressingly common. And it is not the worst or most memorable I have had when applying for visas to travel in Africa or with actual travelling on the continent.

Some years ago, I needed to visit a francophone West African country with no embassy anywhere within the East African Community.

Somebody told me I could apply for a visa straight from the country’s capital. There was no telling, however, how long it would take for a decision to come through. The easier way, he added, was to send my passport with all the required documentation to the country’s embassy in Paris. I would get a result in a matter of days.

I put all the stuff together and sent it by courier to a Parisian “homeboy” who then took it to the embassy.

Within a week, I received my passport back, with the visa duly stamped. I laughed, but the fun did not end there.
It extended to booking the flight. I discovered that the “easiest” way to get there would be to fly to Paris first and then back into Africa.

We complain endlessly about the almost ritual inconveniences or humiliations we suffer at Western embassies when we go there in pursuit of visas.

Little do we talk about similar or worse experiences at African embassies or with immigration officers in African countries.

Nor do we challenge our leaders enough when they go on about what a pity it is that Africans cannot travel freely inside their own continent.

Granted, the number of countries embracing the “visa on arrival” initiative of the African Union is rising.

However, diehards clinging to the old, unimaginative ways of doing things remain in the majority, some seemingly unwilling to change, others seemingly slaves of habit. The response I received from the “security” official in response to another remark I made is telling.

Having pointed out to him that there are countries such as Ghana and Rwanda where all Africans carrying African passports get visas on arrival, he owned up to what the real problem in his country is: “The problem is mindset,” he said, and added: “It is not as if we lack the resources to buy the 50 or so computers such a project would require to get off the ground”.

Perhaps one day Africans will travel in Africa without hassle and without need to do so via Europe. Imagination is all we need.

Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: [email protected]

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