South Africa to Pilot its E-Visa System for Kenyans from November 1, 2019

South Africa to Pilot its E-Visa System for Kenyans from November 1, 2019

Some months ago, President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, during his visit to the Department of Home Affairs (DHA), announced that the country would launch its e-visa in November 2019 for South Africans who want to travel abroad and for international tourists who want to come to South Africa.

According to Ramaphosa:

“The new changes to our visa system are meant to make it easier for tourists to experience our country and contribute to our economic growth and development through their purchase of goods and services.”

The essence of the new e-visa system is to make it easier for foreign citizens to enter into South Africa. The system would enable eligible foreign citizens to apply online for an e-visa to visit South Africa. Applicants for the new e-visa system would be required to have a valid passport, a credit or debit card, and an email address.

A spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs, Siya Qoza, while speaking to BusinessTech, said that the trial phase of the new e-visa system is to test out the resilience of the system, which had already been successfully trialed out by the department in a controlled environment. According to Qoza:

“The pilot test would be conducted with Kenya first at the Lanseria and OR Tambo airports.” Qoza added that “At the end of November, we will evaluate the project and look at which other countries to expand the e-visa system to.”

Therefore, the Department of Home Affairs has announced that the new electronic Visa for South Africa would be made available to Kenyans as from November 1, 2019, to trial out the effectiveness and efficiency of the system. According to Qoza, the entire e-visa application process is estimated to take a Kenyan applicant about 20 minutes as long as all the necessary documents and requirements for the application are at hand when completing the online process.

Qoza added that in case any necessary document is missing, the Kenyan applicant can save the application process to continue at a later time from exactly where he or she had stopped.