All Africans can travel to Kenya for business, leisure, or any other legitimate reason without the need for a visa starting January 1, 2024, says Alfred Mutua Kenya Tourism Minister.
“Kenya has announced that nobody on earth will need a visa to visit starting January 1, 2024,” Mutua said. “We are learning from Rwanda, for example, that has opened up visas to increase their ability for Africans to travel. All Africans can come to Kenya without requiring any visa, so that they can come, stay, trade, and visit because Africans are very good tourists, but they don’t have the ability to connect.”
The Minister made the declaration at the World Travels and Tourism Council discussion in Kigali, Rwanda, on Thursday.
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Mutua said that it is a significant move to allow Africans and the rest of the world to connect to their ancestral homeland, as the country is known to be the home of the human race.
He promised that Kenya has decided to adopt the same immigration approach used by Rwanda to attract thousands of visitors annually.
The Tourism minister went further to say that the government of President William Ruto is planning to expand these visa-free opportunities to other continents by connecting the world to their ancestral home of Kenya.
“But we want to move it further to the rest of the world. As most of you know and as President William Ruto has repeated many times—the findings by archaeologists that the first human being was found in Kenya in a place called Tucana,” he explained.
When quizzed further about the government decision to allow Africans visa-free entry into the country, he reinstated his point by saying, “That is a programme we are working towards and the whole legal mechanism, but that is what we are targeting by the beginning of next year.
“All Africans should pack their bags and come to Kenya, and within a very short time, we are hoping that we can open up Kenya to the rest of the world. This year, no African will need a visa to come to Kenya.”
Nnamdi Maduakor is a Writer, Investor and Entrepreneur
