- By : HOTEL SWOSTI PREMIUM
- Date: 22-06-2018
- Views : 1045
- [Butare, Rwanda]
A senior Rwandan government official on Thursday confirmed that the country was ready to start issuing the Single African passport, to be given in the first instance to top diplomats and other senior government officials, by January 2019.The minister at the Office of the President in Kigali, Judith Uwizeye, said the new passport is expected to unleash benefits linked to, regional and continental integration as part of the African Union’s 2063 Agenda for “a continent with seamless borders”.
She explained that the new passport that was officially introduced since July 2016 also aims to abolish visa requirements for all African citizens in all African countries.
The move came after heads of states and governments members of the African Union (AU) have set December 2018 as the deadline for all countries to start issuing their citizens the Single African passport.
The latest report released by the African Development Bank (AfDB) indicates that only 13 African countries are currently offering liberal access to other Africans.
The Africa Visa Openness Index of the AfDB measures how open African countries are when it comes to visas by looking at what they ask of citizens from other countries in Africa when they travel.
Currently, Africans who need visas to travel to 55 per cent of other African countries, can get visas on arrival in only 25 per cent of other countries, and do not need a visa to travel to just 20 per cent of
other countries on the continent, the report said.
