East Africa's unaccompanied passports

There’s a dog threatening to bite Burundians, hundreds of thousands of them have fled the country in fear, just remove the dog to eliminate the fear of being bitten; unfortunately, there are too many leaders yet so little leadership and the region’s procrastination on the matter has seen it grow from being a storm in a teacup to an elephant in the room. Now, is democracy getting in the way of development? It’s a controversial question, right? But it’s the motion for what is likely to be an interesting debate happening this Friday in Accra; organised by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, speakers will include Mo Ibrahim himself and Rwandan economist Dr. Donald Kaberuka. I was to attend the debate but I am in London until next Sunday; however, a week before I left the country yesterday night, my passport had to travel from Kigali to Pretoria, in South Africa, unaccompanied by its owner, in pursuit of a UK Visa. This may not be news to some of you who travel to UK regularly, but I found it rather irksome that Mr. David Cameron’s administration has to subject all Visa applicants from the entire East African region to this ordeal. Previously, UK Visa applications by East Africans were processed in Nairobi but mid-last year; a decision was taken to transfer the service to Pretoria citing ‘domestic reasons’ that were never really properly explained leaving the press to speculate. The decision came into effect at the end of last year and since then, East African passports have been flying unaccompanied to Pretoria where they stay up to fifteen days or less, depending on circumstances, before being reunited with their owners. And the reunion is not always a happy one, sometimes; applicants have to brace themselves for the bad news that their Visa application was unsuccessful before being advised to re-apply again, a tiresome process that requires plenty of paperwork. Luckily for me, a professional and quite efficient visa agency based in London handled all the application nitty-gritty on my behalf before complications emerged after my first interview with the UK-Visa agency in Kigali (FedEx) on October 19. After submitting all the required paperwork, the lady who interviewed me said my passport would be flown to South Africa that day before getting it back with the verdict fifteen days later; this nonplussed me because I had another trip on October 21, to Ethiopia. There was no way I could travel without my passport and that’s when the drama ensued. The FedEx people have limited options, if they can’t have the applicant’s passport; they have to cancel the application. So I was given two options; drop the trip to Ethiopia and have my passport flown to South Africa or proceed with the trip on condition that the Visa application would be canceled and re-apply after returning. Fifteen days without a passport, can be quite an inconvenience for people who have to travel often, for work or business, it’s good for UK bureaucracy but hazardous for trade. The challenge with these things is that there are barriers to direct communication with officials concerned and if you are just an ordinary applicant seeking to travel to UK for some reason, there’s hardly a way out. Pulling out of the trip to Ethiopia was not an option for me yet I still needed the Visa to UK where I had been invited to attend a sponsored short course at the City University of London’s Centre for Investigative Journalism. I immediately rushed to Kacyiru where the British High Commission in Kigali is located to find someone to talk to; the people there are good and helpful, unfortunately, Visa issues are not part of their job description. The best they could do for me was to contact their counterparts in Pretoria and requested them to give my application special consideration when I reapplied; that meant my earlier application would not only be canceled but I would also have to pay another processing fee. I informed my London agent and a new application form was filled and a new submission date was set for November 2 with my flight to UK scheduled for November 14; all went well, thanks to the help I received from the High Commission officials in Kigali. On November 9, I was reunited with my passport with the Holy Grail stamped somewhere in the middle pages, it allows for multiple entry and expires mid-next year. Let’s say I was lucky to have access to people who helped me but how about others that may not be as privileged? What’s the point of having an embassy that can’t perform one of their most important functions, travel facilitation? At a time when Africa is said to be rising, stringent visa rules such as UK’s are actually barriers to developing trade ties and people-to-people relations with the developed world. I request that, on behalf of all East Africans, UK overturns its decision and return the Visa processing services to Nairobi, if each country having the service at their respective embassies is too much to ask; also, cut the number of processing days from fifteen to at least three. Thank you.

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East Africa's unaccompanied passports