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Aliko
Dangote says faces excessive red tape when crossing African borders. Hollie
Adams/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Even the richest
individual in Africa finds it difficult to travel within his own continent.
Aliko Dangote, a Nigerian by birth, laments that he encounters significantly
more obstacles traveling across Africa than travelers bearing European
passports ever do, while conducting business in several nations.
Dangote stated at the most recent Africa CEO Forum in Kigali, "As an
investor, as someone who wants to make Africa great, I have to apply for 35
different visas on my passport."
The audience laughed as he said, "I really don't have the time to go and
drop off my passport in embassies to get a visa."
The 67-year-old businessman's immigration problems have sparked a new debate
about the difficulties Africans face while traveling within their own
continent.
It’s even more
infuriating for many Africans that European passports from former colonial
masters have more visa-free access in Africa than many African passports. It’s
a point Dangote made powerfully in Kigali, when he turned to the French
executive next to him and deadpanned: “I can assure you that Patrick (Pouyanné,
CEO of Total Energies) doesn’t need 35 visas on a French passport, which means
you have freer movement than myself in Africa.”
Dangote commended
Rwanda, which eliminated visas for all African nationals in 2023. Benin, The
Gambia and Seychelles also offer visa-free access to all Africans.
But many African
countries still require visas from other Africans and the experience is fraught
with discrimination, hostility and sky-high fees.
When Nigerian travel
videographer Tayo Aina arrived in Addis Ababa in April 2021, he claims he was
made to give a feces sample in front of an Ethiopian border officer to verify
he hadn't taken drugs.
He told CNN over the
phone from London, "It was my most humiliating experience traveling within
Africa." Due to his Nigerian passport, he has also been stopped at
airports in South Africa and Kenya.
Aina said last year
that he spent $150,000 purchasing a passport from St. Kitts and Nevis in the
Caribbean to provide more freedom in his travels. Sometimes a country you visit
no longer offers visas upon arrival. There are cases where people get deported
when they land because they changed the policy mid-flight,” the 31-year-old
YouTuber says.
The African Union has
said one of its goals is to remove “restrictions on Africans’ ability to
travel, work and live within their own continent by transforming restrictive
laws and promoting visa-free travel” but implementation has been slow. Free movement
within the continent is a critical part of the African Continental Free Trade
Area, but action hasn’t followed the commitments.
Migration analyst Alan
Hirsch told CNN that one of the reasons African countries make it difficult for
other Africans to visit is because of their fear of permanent migration.
Richer African nations
are afraid that individuals from poorer countries may try to go there
permanently, he says. "We don't really have any records of the irregular
border crossings that many Africans engage in. Certain nations are afraid that
individuals may petition for refuge and then slip through the cracks.
The New South Institute
think tank in Johannesburg hosts a migration program run by the retired
professor from the University of Cape Town. He claims that the integrity of
passport and visa processes, particularly in less developed African nations,
has further impeded the mobility of Africans.
“People have found
illegal ways of obtaining passports, for example someone pretending to be
Burundian without actually being from that country.”
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