Rebecca Jackman
South Africans who regularly travel, be it for business or for pleasure, may grow tired of their passports not getting them easily to all the places they need to be – and of tiresome visa processes and regulations. But what would be the ultimate passports for a South African to obtain this year?
Andrew Taylor, vice-chairman of Henley & Partners, the global leaders in Residence and Citizenship Planning, says that the passport you hold says much more than you may realise about your access to the world.
The Henley Visa Restrictions Index 2014 (HVRI) is a global ranking of countries according to the travel freedom their citizens enjoy, for which Henley & Partners has analysed the visa regulations of all the countries and territories in the world. To find the passports with the greatest access to the world, one needs to look at the travel freedom that each country’s passport holders enjoy, and to do this one needs calculate the number of countries to which each passport holder can travel without a visa.
So, which passports can take you the furthest, according to the HVRI?
All passports around the world may look the same, in that they are all 125x88mm booklets that vary very little, except in colour and country. But the reality is they vary greatly in terms of access to the world.
It’s the dream of many world travellers to have unlimited visa-free travel within their reach. It all depends on the passport you hold – so the one you have in hand becomes very important.
Those South Africans lucky enough to have dual nationality could already have one of the most powerful passports in the world, despite South Africa sitting in 41st place on the 2014 HVRI.
At the top of the list, with visa-free travel to 174 countries each, are Finland, Germany, Sweden, the US and the UK.
Falling into second place, only just behind the highest-ranking countries, are Canada and Denmark, which both have visa-free access to 173 countries.
“Favoured destinations for South Africans include the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. An increasing number of South Africans are taking up dual citizenship in these countries, either for business, travel or lifestyle reasons,” says Taylor.
“Membership of the European Union is a key determinant of ease of movement across frontiers, but it’s actually Europe, North America and Australasia which have the best visa-free access to the world.
“Among the several countries now offering investors the chance to acquire citizenship or residence through investment, the programmes in the European Union offer the ability to live and work across Europe, attend European educational institutions and allow visa-free travel to more countries.”
Third place on the HVRI is a crowded position and includes Belgium, France, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, which all have freedom to travel to a total of 172 countries.
Austria, Ireland and Norway sit in fourth place on the list, with access to 171 countries, while New Zealand, Singapore and Switzerland are in fifth place, with the ability to travel to 170 countries. Other countries in the top 10 spots on the list are Greece, Australia, Malaysia, Malta, Iceland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
As South Africans we enjoy one of the widest ranges of visa-free travel on the African continent, being able to visit 97 of the world’s nations without applying for a visa.
The citizens of the Indian Ocean island nations of Seychelles (129 visa-free countries) and Mauritius (125) are revealed by the HVRI to be the top two most powerful passports in Africa.
Mauritius, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report for 2014, is also the home of sub-Saharan Africa’s most competitive economy.
At the bottom of the HVRI sit Afghanistan (with access to just 28 countries), Iraq (31), Pakistan and Somalia (both 32), Nepal (37) and, with 38 countries each, Eritrea, Libya, Sudan and Syria. Just ahead, with 39 countries each, are Ethiopia, Lebanon, South Sudan and Sri Lanka.
“People in many parts of Asia and Africa face an obstacle course of hurdles to travel,” says Taylor,
Passports from Angola, Bangladesh, Burundi, Djibouti, Myanmar and North Korea allow travel to 42 countries, and those from Equatorial Guinea and Yemen 43 apiece.