2y ago

Kenya to scrap visas for all African nationals

www.theguardian.com

President William Ruto says change aims to boost trade and allow goods, services, people and ideas to move freely across continent

21 comments

The concept of open borders for work and tourism works very well for the EU (imo) - I think this is a good thing.
- It's not been all great for Eastern Europe. Freedom of movement contributed to the massive brain drain plaguing former communist countries. But IIRC Kenya has a strong regional economy so they're positioning themselves to be on the "good" end of increased workforce mobility.
  Personally I think more freedom is a good thing despite those drawbacks, but also it's easy for me to say as a Western European.
  
  That's not a problem of the open borders though. That's an issue with the countries themselves.
  
  Freedom of movement contributed to the massive brain drain plaguing former communist countries.
  Are you suggesting it would have been better to restrict movement so people were forced to stay where they didn't want to?
- Latinamerica have something like that too, mercosur+friends, and is great, me and my wife have traveled all over Latinamerica for work (and for vacations too) and our friends group is a buch people from all over the place that have also do the same.
- it's convenient that much is true, not quite sure if I would call it 'working well' though.
  But corporations are probably happy with all the guests workers doing jobs for the bare minimum amount of money.
- It's ok for workers, awesome for capital.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Visas to visit Kenya are to be scrapped for other African nationals from next year as part of a movement towards opening up trade and travel within the continent.
Costly and time-consuming visa requirements, as well as high air fares, have long created barriers to inter-African travel for African passport holders; 32 out of 54 African countries still require the nationals of half or more countries on the continent to obtain a visa.
Ruto said the removal of barriers was necessary to facilitate the implementation of the African continental free trade area.
“It is time we realise the importance of trading among ourselves and allowing goods, services, people and ideas to move freely across the continent,” he said.
It launched an “AU passport” in 2016 to allow unrestricted travel for Africans within the continent.
Kenya’s announcement has been met with positive reactions from Africans online, and hopes that other countries will follow suit.
The original article contains 377 words, the summary contains 153 words. Saved 59%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
For the whole continent? I thought they would try that starting with their own (proposed) regional block, the Eastern African Federation.

21 comments