Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS)

Although visa openness is low in ECCAS, the region’s average score recorded the highest nominal improvement among the RECs. For example, Angola abolished requirements for a visa from nine countries after the data collection period for last year’s AVOI report had closed, resulting in the country gaining nine places on the rank to 32nd. The Central African Republic, one of several member states in Central Africa, also abolished the requirement for a visa from nationals of four member states who previously required a visa ahead of travel. One of these, Benin, does not require visas from nationals of African countries. Central Africa Republic ranks 40th in 2024, from 42nd in 2023 on the AVOI. Other notable changes have come from Chad and Cameroon, with the former offering visa-free access to Benin, while the latter has imposed a visa requirement on nationals of Mali. Although ECCAS adopted its Protocol on Freedom of Movement and Rights of Establishment of Nationals of Members States in 1983, general visa openness remains low in the region: both towards nationals of other ECCAS member states (the general exception being visa openness among CEMAC members), as well as towards other African countries more broadly. Of the ten ECCAS Member States, four improved their score (Angola, Central African Republic, Chad and São Tomé and Príncipe), one scored lower (Cameroon) and the remaining six remained unchanged.

Among the RECs, ECCAS scores relatively lower in terms of regional visa-free reciprocity. With a score of 33%, this implies that only one in three countries reciprocates each other’s visa-free status. In most travel permutations among member states, there is no reciprocity, suggesting that a significant mismatch between the policies of member states continues to prevail. It also means that measures taken to implement regional visa openness policies are not well advanced.

ECCAS is also the region with the highest reciprocity among RECs on the visa-before-travel metric, suggesting that to advance progress on visa-free reciprocity, member states need to address this issue not only regionally, but also bilaterally. Each new visa-free update will raise the region’s profile.