Member states: Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda
EAC, a common market comprising eight member states after Somalia became a member in early 2024, currently ranks fourth among the eight RECs in terms of average visa openness. As a region, it scores slightly higher than it did a year ago, owing to several factors. The relatively low member base also means that individual countries’ policy changes can have a significant impact on the regional average score, while changes in membership challenge a straightforward linear comparison with the regional scores from a few years back. There has been some easing of restrictive visa policies by Tanzania towards Ethiopia (citizens now qualify for a visa on arrival, resulting in visa policy consistency between the countries), while Uganda now allows citizens of the DRC to enter visa-free.
Amongst the leading performers in the region, Rwanda remains at the top, while Burundi (which offers visa on arrival for non-EAC citizens), Somalia (which requires a visa on arrival for all, except Kenya) and Tanzania are all top-20 countries on the index.
Free movement of persons is an important tenet of the EAC. Commitment towards the free movement of persons within the region is well grounded in the region’s founding objectives and policies, including the Treaty Establishing the EAC (Article 104) and the Protocol on the Establishment of the EAC Common Market (in Article 5).
This year, the region’s reciprocity score of 54% relating to the visa-free policies among member states is much lower than it was in 2023 (71%). Statistically, there is less alignment than previously, but this is largely driven by the fact that Somalia – now included in the data after recently joining the bloc – has the lowest levels of alignment of all the member states. Somalia does not currently offer any other EAC Member States visa-free access and maintains a visa-on-arrival policy towards the continent. This situation will change once there is greater alignment of visa-free policies particularly by, and towards, the more recent member states South Sudan, DRC and Somalia (having the lowest level of visa-free reciprocity of the EAC). Kenya’s introduction of ETA formalities ahead of travel has little impact on this metric, as the country exempts EAC Member States (excluding Somalia).
