Travellers, primarily migrant workers, wait in line at the Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on November 22, 2023, to board a plane for Dubai. (Photo by Marc Fernandes/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Many African countries have visa requirements for people wanting to visit them, including those from other African states. Particularly, middle-income countries in Africa put in place stringent entry visa requirements for citizens of low-income African countries.
The implicit assumption behind tough entry visa requirements of relatively better-off African countries is to exclude unwanted “poor”, “uneducated” or “unskilled” Africans from entering their countries and become a “burden” to their governments and societies.
These assumptions, however, appear to be unfounded, generalised and misguided and fail to appreciate the benefits of immigration. By restricting immigration, African countries are missing out on the developmental dimensions of immigration of any kind. Selective immigration limits development in its multi-dimensionality. Unhindered migration of Africans would bring about accelerated and expanded economic advancement, a web of progressive cultural exchange, social interchange and cohesion, small-scale and large-scale trade and commerce, intellectual and skill transfers and reciprocation, the sharing of progressive political ideas and technological interchange.
The adoption and implementation of free movement of people within the African continent will transform the continent and nation states in particular as access to goods and services, skills, technologies, ideas, information and knowledge become accessible to formerly low-income “underdeveloped” African countries.
It creates expanded and diversified market opportunities for producers, traders and investors of middle-income African countries and political solidarity and the resolution of conflicts through a unified and consolidated African political body. Power lies in unity and solidarity among the many African nation states of various economic sizes and stages of development as opposed to functioning as a single nation-state system.
The formation and proper functioning of an integrated Africa through free Africa-to-Africa migrations will counter the desperate economic dependency of African countries on other countries and non-African financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank for their survival and economic activities.
Commerce and trade within the continent will lift millions of Africans out of poverty and create unprecedented opportunities for African countries to gain competitive goods and services, accelerated technological and skills transfers and the general empowerment of African societies.
Many experts have emphasised strong links between migration and development and the establishment of unrestricted intra-African migrations will not only limit dependency on traditional Western-centric financial institutions but also boost Africa’s economic and social development..
Free migrations within the continent will facilitate and expand socio-economic development for Africa by creating opportunities for people-to-people exchange and interactions which will reduce xenophobia, racism and localised conflicts. As Africans of various cultural, social, racial and ethnic backgrounds freely move around the continent and interact, strong consciousness of “unity-in-diversity” will circulate across the continent paving the way for Africans to embrace and live with their ethnic, tribal, racial, cultural, political, historical, philosophical and national differences and strive for their common socio-economic advancement and wellbeing. People-to-people interactions will gradually displace identity-based animosities and hostilities within the African continent and instead give rise to an Africanist or pan-Africanist consciousness.
The African Union has a vision to establish and energise an African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and African countries should now take initiatives to abolish restrictive visa requirements for Africans by following in the footsteps of countries such as Benin, the Gambia, Seychelles, Kenya and Rwanda. Beyond initiatives by individual national states, region- or subregion visa-free areas can be formed and expanded across the continent.
Regional blocs such as the East African Community, Economic Community of West African States, the Economic Community of Central African States and Southern African Development Community are some of the examples that will facilitate intra-African free migrations.
Through free migrations within the continent, and taking advantage of African resources, African countries will benefit from migration-driven facilitated and expanded development for their societies and no more desperately look beyond the continent for their socio-economic survival and advancement.
Dr Amanuel Isak Tewolde is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Social Development in Africa at the University of Johannesburg.