Browsing: Travel

• The 2024 Henley Passport Index has revealed that African passports still pull teeth in global mobility powerplay, failing to reach the top ten or at least the top fifteen of the annual index.
• In contrast, oil-rich UAE has added 106 destinations to its visa-free score over the past decade.
• Overall, the average number of destinations travelers can access visa-free has nearly doubled from 58 in 2006 to 111 in 2024.

The 2024 Henley Passport Index has been released, and the passport power ranking has exposed several interesting issues, including the ascent of unprecedented nations to the top.

Despite massive investments in the aviation and inter-regional ground transport infrastructure sector by African governments such as Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, and Ethiopia, African countries still struggle to make it into the top ten or at least the top fifteen of the annual index.

On the other side of the aisle, the United Arab …

East Africa has made huge strides in improving the tourism sector in the bloc. So far, three countries have embraced the Single Tourist visa making it easier for the bloc to market it as a single destination as well as allowing tourists access to all three countries from one visa.

The single tourist visa was introduced in 2014 as a pilot between Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda. Under the initiative, tourists can choose between a single-country visa or an EAC tourist visa. With the latter, they are allowed to move freely between the three countries for a period of up to 90 days.

In October 2020, the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) released a report citing the tourism situation in the region.

The EALA noted that certain overriding challenges, including sector underfunding, insecurity, and lack of harmonized policies and laws, need to be speedily addressed to ensure that the sector thrives.…

Economically the World Bank categorizes São Tomé and Príncipe as a lower middle-income state with what it calls a fragile economy.

This is not a mischaracterization as the country relies heavily on the tourism sector, making it much more susceptible to external and exogenous shocks. This assertion is confirmed by the African Development Bank, which reported in its economic outlook on São Tomé and Príncipe that the country’s economy shrank by an estimated 6.4% in 2020 after growing by 2.2% in 2018 and 1.3% in 2019.

Will Ghana’s stance on value addition resonate in Africa?

For the first time in a decade, the contraction in output is attributed to a sharp decline in tourism and service sectors, which were severely hurt by weak external and domestic demand and COVID–19 containment measures.…

The African Union has lauded Kenya’s move to to adopt the Africa CDC Trusted Travel platform for Managing travels through the Covid -19 Pandemic.

This follows the announcement by Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe of the adoption of the platform, making Kenya the first country to take it up.

“The ministry has collaborated with the African Union and Africa CDC, with technical support from PanaBios to implement an online system to authenticate and verify laboratory test certificates for travelers,”  Kagwe noted.

The move is set to ease movement of people by  simplifying verification of public health documentation of travelers during entry and exit across borders.

Also read: Emerging trends in Air Travel industry 

The portal’s key features include information about the latest travel restrictions, and entry requirements, a database of authorized laboratories and vaccination compliance information, as well as Africa CDC mutual recognition protocol for Covid-19 testing and test results …

The hospitality and tourism industry

The hospitality and tourism industry in sub-Saharan Africa must adopt a new “adapt and innovate” modus operandi to meet the challenges produced by the COVID-19 pandemic if it is to help prevent further contraction of severely impacted economies in the region, says Mark Havercroft, Regional Director Africa for the International hotel group Minor Hotels.

While the opening of international borders by several African countries is extremely positive news for ailing travel and hospital sectors in sub-Saharan Africa – and for economies as a whole, this may not, in and of itself, be sufficient to resuscitate the industry in the wake of the havoc wreaked by the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Not only are many of the international tourists who operators are relying on to return quickly still locked down in their own countries, but even if they’re not, there are still very high levels of insecurity around …

Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, Ethiopia, Zambia, Rwanda, Uganda, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.

These are the African countries set to be allowed to enter the EU territory as the borders reopen in July, according to a draft list of the countries obtained and reported by euronews.

As the European Union gets ready to reopen its borders, officials in Brussels are debating behind closed doors, the draft of two lists; one with those countries that will be accepted, and one for those which will not, as the territory struggle to meet their previously announced July 1st goal.

The euronews sources also reported that officials “could not reach an agreement”, that talks would continue and that the deadline to open the borders may very well be extended beyond July 1st, suggesting agreements will not be forthcoming in time.

Also read: Air passengers travel confidence key to salvaging African airlines

Notably, Brazil, Qatar, …

We are in a recession!

This is the stark reality that the world is facing and it has come sooner than many have predicted thanks to the covid-19 coronavirus. Already, the world is reeling from shock at the sheer magnitude of effect the virus has had on every aspect of life.

In addition to the lives and man-hours lost, the world will take a long time to recover from the hit. The global economy has suffered massive losses since the WHO announced the threat of the disease which was made public globally on December 31, 2019.

Already, airlines have started manifesting the effects of the coronavirus outbreak with Kenya Airways (KQ) staff taking a pay cut starting with newly appointed CEO Allan Kilavuka who will see his salary whittled down by 80 per cent from the 35 per cent he had announced earlier.

Tala’s next mission after freezing operations in