OPINION
Free movement in Africa is desirable, but how to realize it?
by Mandla Lionel Isaacs
Mandla Lionel Isaacs Director of Research at the Ministry of
Home Affairs in South Africa.
Protests coordinated on social media have emerged in recent weeks throughout the country addressing national issues
Free movement is back on the continent’ s policy agenda and within its integration discourse. Such discourse has also been buttressed by several encouraging developments over the last year or so, notably the launch in early 2016 of a new Africa Visa Openness Report; the move by several African countries to offer visas on arrival to citizens of AU member states; and the July 2016 launch of the African passport. Underpinning all of these developments, and particularly the launch of the African passport, is the African Union’ s Agenda 2063, which calls for visa-free travel by all Africans in Africa by 2018. These are encouraging developments which move us closer to the point when Africans move as freely across the continent as European Union citizens move across Europe, and American citizens move across the United States.
Unfortunately, though, wanting free movement is not enough to make it happen. Regional integration in Africa has long been an extraordi- narily promising and frustrating policy area. Promising, because most experts and policymakers agree that integration will yield enormous economic and social benefits for African countries and citizens. Frustrating, because despite treaties, agreements and public statements of support by
African leaders over the decades, real progress towards regional and continental common markets in which people, goods, services and capital move freely, has been slow and is incomplete.
Accordingly, I would like to make four suggestions on how to advance
18 Business Times Africa | 2016