EASING VISA RESTRICTIONS LEADS TO MORE TRAVEL
(Posted 27th December 2016)
In time for the peak season of travel, over the Christmas and New Year holidays have Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana resumed issuing their UniVisa, aka KAZA Visa.
The signing ceremony between the three countries was used to promote culture and heritage and common transboundary conservation areas, which can now be visited by foreign tourists under one Visa regime, to be issued at the airport of entry either being Harare, Lusaka or Gaborone.
The move is expected to provide a major incentive for foreign tourists to visit more than just one of the countries in the region, helping boost visitor numbers to the parks and key attractions like the Victoria Falls.
Angola, Namibia, Mozambique, Swaziland and even South Africa are due to join the KAZA UniVisa in due course, opening up a large part of SADC for foreign tourists to enter and travel under one single Visa arrangement.
This form of Visa regime was first launched for the jointly hosted UNWTO General Assembly meeting allowing attendees to cross the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia at the Victoria Falls with complete ease.
In East Africa a similar modus operandum is in place between Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya whereby tourists can at their airport of entry ask for a common tourist Visa at the cost of 100 US Dollar, saving 50 US Dollars for those who intend to travel across all three countries.
Sadly does Tanzania continue to stay outside these arrangements, citing the need to capacity build first, raising acid questions what they have been doing over the past decades if they still lack the capacity today to integrate into the regional EAC bloc.
