Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN‑SAD)

CEN-SAD includes many of the continent’s visa openness leading performers. While its regional average score has slipped slightly since last year, dropping it from joint second to third place among the eight RECs, the region continues to account for most of the top-10 and top-20 ranked countries on the AVOI. Seven of the continent’s top-10 performers are members of CEN-SAD. This REC also counts the highest number of member states, with almost half of the continent’s countries part of this REC. However, most also belong to other RECs, including ECOWAS, the leading and most integrated REC in terms of the free movement of people, which in turn has a large influence on the score of CEN-SAD. Yet at the same time, three of the four lowest ranked countries on the AVOI are also members of CEN-SAD. 

Promoting the free movement of persons, goods and services remains a core objective of CEN-SAD⁸. However, this has not yet resulted in coordinated and sustained high levels of visa openness among all of its member states. Visa-free reciprocity is achieved in 34% of intra-regional travel scenarios, placing the region fifth among the RECs in this metric. Nine of the 10 highest performers in terms of regional visa-free policy reciprocity in CEN-SAD are also members of ECOWAS, which achieves a 99% score in this metric. This focuses attention on the fact that not only is there large variation in the way visa policies are applied within the region, but also that visa openness by individual countries towards non-members of CEN-SAD are often far more liberal than those applied to members of the group.

Sometimes economic reasons drive individual countries’ resolve to adopt more liberal policies than what other member states offer in return. Seasonal labour may play an important role in regional migration patterns, especially in the agricultural sector, where for example cocoa, and cotton production, particularly in some coastal countries, may attract inward migration when demand for labour and associated job opportunities are high. 

At the opposite end of the spectrum, only two RECs (IGAD and COMESA) have higher levels of non-reciprocity on their visa regimes than CEN-SAD, suggesting relatively high non-uniformity in the implementation of regional movement of person policies, and different approaches towards inward migration among the member states. This is illustrated by some of the countries with high scores on the AVOI, such as Benin and The Gambia, which offer visa-free access to all on the continent, yet this openness is reciprocated by only 14 and 13 CENSAD member states, respectively. These visa requirements, however, are typically applied by countries much further afield (yet still part of CEN-SAD), and not by neighbouring countries. Ghana and Nigeria, the fifth and sixth ranked countries respectively, also tend to have stricter visa policies towards non-ECOWAS countries within this REC, albeit the resultant non-reciprocity in these two examples tends to involve visa-on-arrival facilities that are not reciprocated by the partner state, as no such system exists.

⁸  UNECA (archive)