Progress Finally Being Made on a Single African Passport
Photo Credit: Pictured is a South African passport. The African Union is making progress on an Africa-wide passport. Richard Holmes
Skift Take
Will 2019 be the year that the African Union passport is made freely available to the continent’s 1.2 billion citizens? Probably not, but technocrats at the 55-nation union say progress is being made.
Visa-free travel for all African citizens, to all African countries.
It’s a goal that’s as simple as it is ambitious, but that’s the vision of the African Union (AU) passport, a flagship project of the AU. But as with many projects of the 55-nation bloc – the Single African Air Transport Market took three decades – it’s an endeavor quick to be hyped, but excruciatingly slow in coming to fruition.
The African Union passport was first unveiled in 2016, when Rwandan president Paul Kagame and Chadian president Idriss Déby received the first documents to offer visa-free travel through the Union.
Since then the project has kept a low profile, and to date only a handful of government leaders, diplomats and AU officials have been issued with passports. Officials from member states met in Nairobi in mid-2018 to hammer out the technical detai
