Arunga: Why is travelling with an African passport so difficult?

This week, a tweet by Dr Ahmed Ogwell, a director at Africa CDC, went viral.

In the tweet, Dr Ogwell shared how immigration personnel in Frankfurt mistreated him.

He was on his way to attend the World Health Summit. 

A few months ago, Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of UNAIDS, faced discrimination when she was trying to travel Canada for a work-related event. 

Cases of travellers with African passports facing discrimination in Western airports are rampant. 

It’s an exhausting cycle. Already, the entire idea of visas doesn’t make sense, for the most part, because it only works one way.

For example, a Kenyan filing an application for the US visa will part with Sh16,000. For an American visiting here? They pay around Sh6,000. They don't have to show bank statements, they are not required to show that they are employed, no proof of a return ticket is required. 

In Kenya, we come short of giving the blood of your unborn child to get a simple visitor’s visa to the States.

And this is just for ordinary citizens. You would think that people in more formal spaces, or rather, spaces that are shaping policy and development for the future of Africa, and indeed, the world would have a little bit of an easier ride.

As we see above, that is not the case, and this is why I say that the entire idea of visas is false, predicated on a power play that should not be allowed to exist, but funds too many foreign embassies and ‘expatriates’ to stop.

These supposed first-world countries claim that they want Africans to prove that we have business to do in their countries, and promise that we are not going to stay – this is another lie, obviously, because even those who do have ‘business’ there, are still mistreated.

It begs the question as to why we allow this kind of gross imbalance to exist. We are coming to the table as beggars when we should in fact be coming as equals; something we saw quite clearly at the beginning of the current vaccine apartheid when vaccines were being tested and formulated by Kenyans in Kenya (and then suddenly rejected on weak bases that no one understood).

We have the expertise to produce on an intercontinental level. We are the continent with the most natural resources and the youngest populations; and if the tourism statistics are anything to go by, better weather, too.

So why is it that for a continent that is needed more than we need – we are the ones facing the brunt of this consistently derogatory dehumanisation?

It also begs the question as to why the ‘first world,’ knowing their stringent and unreasonable immigration policies, continue to hold these conferences in countries that are inaccessible – Germany, Canada, the US, et al.

If anything, we are supposed to be working towards a global mindset for these big goals – under the visions for 2030, SDG aspirations, and all that jazz. These big goals meant for the whole world can not be accomplished if it is only eight nations show up. Everyone must have a seat at the table.

If these countries are not going to be more helpful in facilitating entry, why are all these conferences held there, year in year out?

Unless of course I am talking to myself in an echo chamber that assumes that these countries even care to pay attention to the ‘global South.’ Maybe they don’t actually want us there, and all this is a grandiose performance of inclusivity. In which case the problem here is much bigger than just visas.