Ghana just scrapped visa requirements for all Africans. Does this mean the dream of pan-African unity is finally within reach? And what about the nightmare travel costs and high residence permit fees and to travel?
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00:00Ghana has removed its visa requirements for all Africans. That's a moment of hooray
00:06But wait, why do visas in Africa still exist? What is happening here is
00:13Essentially the insistence of the levying of a sort of visitation tax on people who choose to come into the country
00:20Rwanda, Seychelles, The Gambia and Benin have also waived visa requirements to promote free movement of Africans
00:27But for the average person, is it really as simple as packing a bag and jumping on a bus or a plane?
00:34Welcome to the flip side
00:36Yeah, African unity has long been a desire among pan-Africanist
00:40The African Union AU even has a free movement protocol. So why isn't it happening on a large scale?
00:47There is a fear that there will be insecurity
00:52To spread which can spread across the continent
00:55There is also the fear that they will lose revenue that they get from selling visas
01:01So is it also about money?
01:04Does it mean that countries like Ghana that remove visa fees will become poorer? If you take Seychelles for instance, for example
01:14After its adoption of free movement there had been
01:18an average of 7% increase in
01:22tourist arrivals and tourist revenue
01:25which helped to
01:27propel the economy
01:28From a low middle-income economy to a high middle-income
01:33economy. So visas are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to intra-Africa movement. The high travel cost within Africa
01:41Residence permit fees and the bribes some bureaucrats and border officials expect are still significant obstacles
01:49Many Africans living in Ghana are having to pay extortionate fees just to be here for a work permit
01:55One is required to pay a thousand dollars per year to be in Ghana. This is
02:00Encouraging people to look elsewhere. This is telling people that you cannot be here unless you are of a certain income bracket and
02:08This is by no means restricted to Ghana
02:10Did you see what happened to Wodemeyer, one of the biggest youtubers in Africa when he tried to get into Togo?
02:28Waiving visa requirements is great
02:31but if more countries sign up to that free movement protocol more Africans can still circulate within the continent and
02:39Lowering the cost of residence and work permits is an obvious plus because it would encourage skilled labor migration and
02:46economic integration and that's the flip side