Member states: Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe
SADC continues to claim the second highest average visa openness score. Two of its 16 members (Seychelles and Mauritius) rank in the top 10 and a further 4 countries are in the top 20 on the AVOI (Mozambique, Madagascar, Comoros and Tanzania). Each of these countries is situated on the east coast of Africa or is an Island State. Several are also jointly members of COMESA. Namibia falls just outside of the top 20 (2024: 21), having eased visa restrictions towards Ghana over the past year.
SADC’s score shows a slight improvement over 2023 and is now at its highest level since the first AVOI report, gradually progressing upwards over the years. Over time, six member states have improved their score: the biggest jump was by Angola, which removed visa restrictions towards nationals from nine African countries. Notably, five of the countries benefiting from this more liberal policy are SADC members, a reflection of Angola’s commitment to embrace established SADC principles around the free movement of persons. Other improvements came from Malawi (loosening of its policies towards Ghana and Sierra Leone), from Namibia, Mozambique (visa-free policy towards Senegal), South Africa (no visa required by nationals of Ghana), and Tanzania (visa required ahead of travel to visa-on-arrival policy towards Ethiopia).
Several commitments towards freeing the movement of persons within the region are contained in different regional protocols and regional plans, including the Protocol on the Facilitation of Movement of Persons, (which in Article 3 obligates member states to permit visa-free entry by citizens of other member states, for up to 90 days a year, for bona fide visits). Full implementation is lagging; not all members have signed it, and only seven have ratified and domesticated it12 (below the required threshold for it to enter into force – the last ratification was in 2019). This cross-cutting issue also features in other SADC protocols and plans, for example the Protocol on Trade in Services, which critically relies on the movement of persons, or the SADC Labour Migration Action Plan.
With a score of 60%, SADC’s visa-free reciprocity ranks third amongst the RECs. The visa policies of some countries, such as DRC, which require a visa ahead of travel from all but two other SADC Member States, and those of Madagascar and Comoros which offer only visa on arrival, weigh on SADC’s reciprocity score. But overall, the requirement for a visa ahead of travel is low for intra-SADC travel, and in only 6% of travel scenarios do member states require a visa from each other’s citizens.
Angola, the lowest ranked SADC country among those offering any significant visa-free entry, has improved its reciprocity score remarkably after allowing visa-free access to citizens from five more SADC Member States since the previous AVOI report. The performance of several SADC Member States indicates that there is relatively high visa-free alignment of their bilateral policies, consistent with an overall regional agenda, even if some countries individually still fare relatively poorly on the overall index. For example, Eswatini (33rd) and Lesotho (36th) feature well down in the lower half of the AVOI but offer visa-free entry to 12 and 11 other SADC Member States respectively, and benefit from relatively high levels of policy alignment within SADC in this metric. This can be attributed to the importance of regional policies on the free movement of persons and is an indicator that the regional environment can serve as an important first step towards greater visa openness but also offers a relatively safer environment to do so, where countries might otherwise be more reluctant or constrained by political and other sensitivities.
12 pmg.org.za
