Rwanda is granting visa to Africans on arrival in the country. Paul Kagame, the president made this known by himself. Kenya, her neighbour, is following that pathway. The two will be joined by South Africa in December. South Africa is on a trial run. Gambia, Benin and Seychelles are already implementing the visa-free policy. As usual, President Paul Kagame has the most provocative or least apologetic case for visa-free policy.
Paul Kagame says it in the way that only Kagame can say it -dramatic and unapologetic!
Moving there
While this chapter is beautifully unfolding on the African scene, Tanzania seems to be moving in reverse gear. That would be a sad paradox if it were true, given late President Julius Nyerere’s version of Pan-Africanism and its obvious priority for such a package.
Tanzania grants Europeans visa on arrival but not Africans. Some Africans based in Switzerland who applied to the Tanzanian Embassy in Geneva last September, for example, have still to get a visa. They were heading to Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. They were forced to drop Tanzania from the list as Kenya and Uganda do not ask Africans to obtain visa to enter the respective countries. Intervention understands that they had to do so after visiting the Tanzania Embassy in the country, getting them to call the immigration office in Dar es Salaam but without any bright light.
Tanzania is yet to speak on this particular issue but it will be sad if the extenuating variable that might be involved does not excuse the action. It will make Pan-Africanists, particularly the late Dr Tajudeen Abdulraheem, who championed what has now produced the current phase of visa-free policy trend, to turn and turn in their graves. The assumption is that Tanzania can rev up and join the visa-free policy.
With Seychelles, Gambia, South Africa and the three East African countries as well as Ethiopia’s transit-free policy, the continent is surely on a new phase of self-rediscovery although visa-free in itself is not an end but a means to an end.
