Acquiring a visa in Kenya to travel to other countries is a perennial headache for citizens, who sometimes end up missing out on important work trips, academic scholarships and family events.
It is not just Western countries that throw up obstacles for Kenyans but African nations too. Kenyans are taken through strenuous processes that sometimes last years.
Take the case of Diana (not her real name), who received a partial scholarship to study for a master’s degree at a university in the United States in January 2021. Her admission letter urged her to report to school in May.
She believed that the university’s letter, combined with the fact that her sister is married and lives in the US, would make it easier for her to get a visa. But her request was denied because “her financial standings were not convincing enough”.
She does not comprehend how her finances were supposed to be “convincing” when she is a student in her mid-20s who is yet to finish a year in gainful employment.
The university advised her to defer her studies for a semester and join in September last year. Come June 2021, she reapplied for a visa, after the required five month-period ended since her first application went haywire in January.
Despite making it clear that she was to join school in September 2022, she was given an appointment in October 2023!
She then sought an expedited appointment, but she received an email last week informing her that the application had not been approved and her appointment for October 2023 still stands.
“It is not an easy process. It has been almost three years since I got my scholarship and I am not even sure if my appointment in 2023 will be successful. I feel hopeless,” she said.
She is puzzled that other students from Asia and Europe, with whom she is in a WhatsApp group and who received the same scholarship to the US university, said they had easily acquired their visas to travel to the US.
Another case is that of Fatima. She is married to an Australian national, but that has done nothing to help her get a partner’s visa and permanent residence in Australia in a process that began in September 2020.
On top of that, she had not seen her husband for about three years since he left Kenya to settle in Australia in late 2019.
“No sooner had my husband landed in Australia than the Covid-19 pandemic came and the country was locked down for the subsequent two years,” she said.
“My husband left me with our three-month-old daughter and he only saw her a few months ago when he came to Kenya after the travel bans were lifted.”
Fatima paid the required 7,000 Australian dollars (about Sh560,000) in September 2020 and was given an appointment in 2021. She thought an interview was all she would need, until she was asked to go for a medical checkup on August 13 last year at a facility chosen by the embassy. She paid Sh38,000.
She was also called to the embassy for her biometrics to be captured on November 4 last year. No communication regarding her visa application has been made since. She worries that if her application is not acted by August 13, she may have to redo the medical check-up, whose validity expires after one year. She will have to cough up another Sh38,000 for the same process.
Another case is that of Florence Agutu, a communications specialist with an international NGO. She applied for a visa to visit Nigeria for work when she worked as a journalist two years ago. It is common for journalists to travel frequently for work or conferences.
“African country? No sweat, I thought as I filled out the application forms and collected the documents I needed. Boy, was I wrong,” she said
“After queuing for four hours, I eventually got to the first vetting point and was cleared to go to the visa counter. At the counter, one of the attendants rudely told me that I could not get a visa, as I was a journalist and needed a clearance letter from the Ministry of Information in Abuja,” she said.
The only media-related document required, as documented on the ministry’s website, was an accreditation letter, which she had acquired from the Media Council of Kenya and had attached to her documents.
When she pressed further for an explanation, she was given back her documents and asked to come back with a clearance letter explaining her mission in Lagos. The deadline was fast approaching and she had not made any progress with the visa.
“I called a colleague in the media who had [received] her visa and I asked her what miracle she performed. She informed me that she had to part with a bribe of Sh5,000 and advised me to do the same because ‘that is the way things work’,” she said.
Her sponsors intervened and the Nigerian embassy called her to collect her visa, but she decided not to take the field trip, which was a great opportunity to travel and network.
“I turned down the offer as the embassy experience had left a bad taste in my mouth. So much that I lost my appetite to travel,” she said.
They are not alone. Kenya’s athletics ace Ferdinand Omanyala had trouble with his application for a visa from the US embassy that nearly threatened his participation in the World Championships in Oregon. He received the travel document only on Thursday evening, barely 30 hours before the competition’s heats were to start.
Following Omanyala’s experience, several Kenyans have opened up about their struggles getting visas to travel abroad.
One Twitter user, @nyandiko, revealed that she had purchased tickets for the highly anticipated Electronic Dance Music Festival, ‘Tomorrowland 2022’ in Belgium, but was denied a visa. She was not convinced by the reasons given to her.
“So I have just been told that touring and Tomorrowland is not enough reason to travel. That as a black person, I need more reasons to travel to Belgium or to any country in Europe,” she posted.
Interestingly, Tomorrowland is one of the hardest festivals in the world to get tickets for, with millions of people globally trying to buy a few hundred thousand tickets that usually sell out in minutes. Its tickets are also among the priciest in the world.
A Tomorrowland 2022 day pass costs $127 (about Sh15,000), while a weekend pass (without camping) starts at $298 (about Sh35,270). These prices are for early birds, with tickets becoming more expensive for those who miss out on the pre-sale phase.
Still, her financial mettle did nothing to convince the Belgian embassy that she just wanted to tour the country and attend the electro-dance music festival.
Kenyan citizens have raised questions about the country’s diplomatic ties with other nations regarding the problems they face trying to get visas to travel abroad, with some urging the government to pull up its socks and help make the process smoother.
