The new AU Passport is not proposing free, unlimited and unmonitored movement throughout Africa, but it still raises concerns about security and labour migration.
At the opening ceremony of the 27th AU Summit in Kigali on Sunday, the chairwoman of the AU Commission - Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma - announced the launch of the African Passport. The passport is a biometric e-passport modelled on the system used in Europe and allows for visa-free travel to all of the AU’s 54 member states.
Chadian president Idriss Deby Itno, the chairwoman of the AU, and Rwandan president Paul Kagame were the first to be issued with the new document.
“Launch” is perhaps a ceremonial rather than practical word to use in this instance. Currently, the passport will only be issued to heads of state, AU officials and select government members. The goal is to have individual countries issue the African Passport to their citizens by 2018 - a deadline that will almost certainly be missed due to the complexity of administrative, legal and political negotiation that needs to take place before then.
The launch of the continental passport is also plagued with ambiguity. Rwanda, for example, has said that it is ready to issue the African Passport to its citizens. But unless all African countries accept that these Rwandans should travel visa-free, the passport amounts to nothing more than intention.
It is unclear who qualifies for the African Passport and how. Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Zambia and South Africa, for example, legally protect the right of every individual to have a passport. Will the same apply to the African Passport? Or will citizens have to qualify for the passport like they do for current visas with factors such as income, motive for travel and criminal record determining their eligibility?
Skills movement
The motive for issuing an African Passport is to encourage higher flows of intraAfrican trade and movement of skills. Currently intra-African trade accounts for only 13 percent of total trade. Africa as a market has an annual production greater than $3 trillion (R43trln) and holds over 1 billion people. Growing consumer income, increasing skills levels and improving access to natural resources is boosting Africa’s potential to drive growth from within. Yet due to poor access to markets and lack of co-ordination this potential is not being realised.
While benefits for regional integration abound, if movement of people is a barrier to growth then launching a new continental passport seems second fiddle to simply addressing the current visa restrictions in Africa.
Only 13 of the 55 African states allow other Africans to enter their countries without prior application for a visa. On July 1, Ghana said it would allow visitors from any African nations to stay in Ghana for up to 30 days without a visa. It follows in the footsteps of the Seychelles, Rwanda and Mauritius who have also waived visa requirements for short-stay visitors.
Visa-free entry does not mean regional economic powers such as South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya will suddenly drown under bulging populations looking for work or welfare. Visa-free entry still requires visitors to hold a legal document, register their date of entry and face the consequence should they overstay.
Monitoring of new visitors will place an extra cost on the state in terms of policing, but no more than an underdeveloped and fragmented continent will. South Africa’s greatest problem with migrant labour is not the inflow of formal visitors but the financial burden of refugees and asylum seekers. This burden is best relieved by helping to eliminate the reason they are here in the first place and that requires better integration of African economies.
The African Passport is the precursor to an ambitious plan to establish an African Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA). The CFTA will build on work already done by the existing eight regional trade agreements in Africa to allow duty-free movement of goods across all African states.
The list of challenges brought by integration is long, but protectionism will only guarantee that South Africa remains isolated from Africa’s growing success.
* Pierre Heistein is the instructor of UCT’s Applied Economics for Smart Decision Making course. Follow him on Twitter @PierreHeistein.
** The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Independent Media.
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