South Africa has introduced a five-year multiple entry visa for businessmen to encourage travel to and from South Africa and Nigeria.
South African Consul General to Nigeria, Bobby Moroe, disclosed this on Thursday at the 2024 Nigeria-South Africa Chamber of Commerce Breakfast hosted by South African Airways.
Moroe described the visa as a ‘special provision’ for business travellers and said: “We now have a five-year multiple entry visa for business people. If I was at liberty to mention people’s names, I would do that. This includes tourist visas. Our turnaround period has been cut short. We are now also able to invite you for a briefing if you will be travelling to South Africa in groups.”
“As groups, we set up appointments on your behalf with VFS, you give us a date and submit a list, to make a request for VFS to allow you to submit with your group. Those are the interventions that we have made. This is an on-going mandate we have given to ourselves for us to be able to respond to the challenges that have been raised to us.”
The Consul General said visa procedures for Nigerians have been streamlined since an immigration forum was held last year. Challenges to visas by stakeholders were also heard.
He said the consulate has been working on mechanisms for the past year to make it easier for people to get visas.
“Firstly, processing times have been reduced. Previously, people would complain that we were holding on to their passports for too long. Processing times are now up to seven to eight days.
“But you also have choices. If you want to travel to the UK or other parts of the world and apply for a visa, there are no more restrictions. You can use your data page, authenticate it, attach it to your application package, submit your application and then travel to the UK. When your visa is ready, we will send you an SMS.
“You might be sitting somewhere in the U.K or Dubai and we will send you a message that your visa is ready, when you return back home, you’ll get your visa,” Moroe explained.
He said if people were travelling to Zimbabwe or Namibia via South Africa, the consulate could assist them with transit through South Africa.
“When it comes to South African nationals, they do not necessarily require visas to certain regions. The same way for West Africa nationals, you use your ECOWAS passport but you must be in that particular country for a period not exceeding 90 days,” he said.
On the value of trade between Nigeria and South Africa, he said that according to statistics for 2022, the trade volume is about $72.1 billion in Nigeria’s favour, while trade with South Africa is $447 million.
“This $72.1 billion is dominated by products such as rubber, petroleum and crude oil.
“But we also have exports of pears and apples worth $43.2 million.This is why we are told that the consumption of apples and pears is very high in Nigeria.
“Considering the population of Nigeria and South Africa, it makes sense that the trade balance is in your favour but I think more can be done especially at increasing the number of Nigerian companies in South Africa,” he said
South African Airways country manager Kemi Leke-Bamtefa, said the airline would increase flights from Lagos from three times a week to five times a week from the end of October 2024.
Leke Bamtefa said the airline would serve two new destinations: Perth Australia and Sao Paulo in Brazil.
She asserted that SAA is a network airline and can connect travellers to various destinations in Southern Africa.
