After nine months of withholding applicants’ passports at its Embassy, South Africa has pledged to ease visa processing for the business community in Nigeria.
Officials of the South African High Commission, at a parley with the business community in Lagos, said the unfriendly bottleneck would soon be over through longer visa validity approvals.
Except for some tourists, Nigerians seeking visa to South Africa on business, medical, studentship, research, essential skills and work grounds, have lately and routinely been having unsavoury tales about the South African immigration policy.
Consulate General of the Republic of South Africa, Lagos, Dr. Bobby Moroe, at the session held in Lagos, recently, said the government had relaxed its visa policy to Nigerian businessmen and frequent travellers to South Africa by granting 10 years of visa validity.
Moroe said it is not good to issue a six months visa for intending travellers to visit his country for business. He noted that both South Africa and Nigeria had signed over 32 agreements cutting across various sectors including aviation, but lamented the lack of implementation of the agreements, which he said, was not good enough.
He said: “We have always placed aviation in a box. Many people see aviation as just traveling from one point to another. We have never thought of leveraging the great opportunities that the aviation sector can help in national development. The aviation sector has been neglected for many years. I used to think that people who travel by air or who have business in aviation are from wealthy homes, and many people still think that way till today.”
The diplomat added that aviation contributes 4.5 per cent to the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP), adding that it is a very huge sector that had been undermined over the years. Aviation provides the only rapid worldwide transportation network, which makes it essential for global business.
He said: “We need to be intentional about what we want to do with aviation. There are over 500 Nigerian professionals that are doing extremely well for themselves in South Africa in the tech space.”
Vice-Consul, Political, of the Consulate General in Lagos, Busisiwe Dlamini, stated that her country was looking at visa processing that would make visa application less cumbersome for applicants seeking to travel to South Africa.
“As our colleague said, there is a trade deficit between South Africa and Nigeria. This forum is not just to address visa issues but also to address other issues. We thought that if we take an umbrella approach, it won’t work. We want to diversify trade and investment with Nigeria.”
