Kenya’s open-door visa policy faces up taxation craze

Kenya's President William Ruto has made it a priority to open the country's borders by granting visa-free travel to more Africans. The gesture is not necessarily reciprocal, but is seen by the Kenyan leader as a way of attracting more tourists and opening up Kenyan products to benefit from the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement.

He has spoken of it three times this year: at the African Union summit in September, when he hosted visiting Angolan President João Lourenço, and at a recent conference in Congo-Brazzaville last week.

"Opportunities for growing intra-African trade and greater cooperation lie in a visa- and tariff-free continent," Ruto said at the Three Basins Summit in Brazzaville last Saturday.

“Former colonial powers that implemented barriers in the continent have since abandoned the regime, and are now in a 27-member trading bloc with a common currency and a common visa,” Ruto added, referring to the European Union.

His arguments are hardly unique. Other countries such as Rwanda, Ghana and Ethiopia have also opened their borders with visa-free or visa-on-arrival offers. They are all talking about increasing trade, which currently stands at 17 per cent between African countries, compared with 70 per cent in the EU.

Since coming to power, Ruto has added six countries to the visa-free list, including South Africa, Djibouti, Eritrea, Congo-Brazzaville, Comoros and the Democratic Republic of Congo (under the East African Community, which already included six others). Last month, he offered visa-free travel to Angolans, although Luanda did not immediately reciprocate.

“By the end of the year, no African will need a visa to travel to Kenya. Our children should not be locked out of borders in Europe and be locked out of borders in Africa,” he said in Brazzaville.

There are benefits to opening up, experts say, including the obvious ease of obtaining visas before travelling, especially for business people. In September, Ruto said Kenya should be home and promised to waive visas “because it is unfair to ask anybody coming home for a visa.”

“The President appears to appreciate the fact that trade and mobility on the African continent are intertwined,” said Davis Nyagah, a migration lawyer and consultant in Nairobi.

“Migration and mobility have been linked to the economic development of the African continent, as outlined in several of the African Union’s (AU) key policy frameworks, including the Boosting Intra-African Trade (BIAT) and the Agenda 2063.”

In its efforts to achieve Agenda 2063, the African Union has sought to promote trade and free movement. In 2018, it launched the AfCFTA. It also adopted the Protocol to the Treaty Establishing the African Community on the Free Movement of Persons, Right of Residence and Establishment (AU-FMP).

More recently, the continental body itself, in a report assessing the implementation of Agenda 2063 goals, acknowledged that accelerating growth and expanding intra-African trade depends on the free movement of people.

“Consequently, the relationship between the free movement of goods and services across the continent through the AfCFTA and the free movement of persons is essential in order to harness the benefits of regional integration and trade, and this seems to be informing the President’s agenda in the hope that other African countries will reciprocate,” Nyagah told Nation.Africa.

Read: President Ruto limits trips abroad by Executive to 45 days annually

But Ruto's presidential announcement hasn't been matched by policy changes. For example, Kenya is among 44 African countries that have ratified the AfCFTA, but has yet to endorse the AU FMP (Free Movement of Persons), raising questions about whether the announcements will get bogged down in bureaucracy.

Ngovi Kitau, a historian and retired Kenyan diplomat, says visa-free travel is more successful where regions are already closely culturally linked, as in the EU, where some countries like Cyprus and Turkey have struggled to join.

“But being a member of the EU is not just a territorial destination, it’s also a social construct,” he told Nation.Africa.

“In this case, the issues revolve around political and economic differences, human rights etc. If these issues have been resolved and harmonised in Africa, then December 31, 2023 target date is feasible.”

But he says countries usually issue visas for national security, to control public health, to protect scarce local employment opportunities and to raise revenue.

Read: Ruto slaps State officials with travel ban to lower government spending

Will Kenya consider an alternative?

Kitau argues that the pilot phase should prioritise tourists and business people on short visits.

This week, the Kenya Tourism Board said it was targeting 5.5 million international tourist arrivals in the next five years.

KTB Chairman Francis Gichaba said the strategic plan for 2023-2028, launched on Wednesday, also aims to increase the tourism sector's contribution to Kenya's economy to $6.63 billion annually by June 2028.

“We are very optimistic that with the support of the private sector and other key players in the industry, our performance will even surpass the 2019 arrivals to over 2 million and progressively beyond,” Gichaba told tourism stakeholders in Nairobi.

Under the strategy, the performance of the domestic market is also expected to grow from the current 5 million bed nights to about 7.4 million by 2028.  The whole projection, however, requires other government departments to play ball.

This week, the Kenya Revenue Authority caused an uproar when it announced that it would tax new or used items brought into the country if their value exceeds $500.

Read: Ruto’s 29 diplomatic meets in 9 months

In fact, the policy is not new. But travellers have protested at the zeal with which tax officials are frisking arrivals. And it means departing Kenyans have to go through a rigorous bureaucracy to declare items they intend to return with, which only adds to the queues.

David Monda, a professor of political science at the City University of New York, said visa-free travel could reduce the need for smuggling of goods and people and generally cut a bureaucratic step, encouraging frequent people-to-people contact and thus promoting new forms of tourism such as medical care.

“If Kenya's visa policy is not reciprocated by other African countries, it is disadvantageous (even discriminatory) to Kenyan businesses and its citizens,” he said.

“Think, for instance, the problems of accessing African Open Skies via the Yamoussoukro Accord, which has limited (Kenya Airways) KQ's expansion into many African countries fearful of KQ taking over their national airline market. Or Equity/KCB's aggressive expansion plans for the region, limited due to strict visa requirements for Kenyan employees,” he told The EastAfrican.

It will take maximum cooperation between cross-border agencies, he says, as cross-border crime could also increase, as well as potential health problems often limited by visa requirements.

Additional reporting by Xinhua