East African single tourist visa has been hailed as the most progressive visa regulation in Africa, But Uganda’s tourist minister has raised a red flag over what she terms as other countries signed to the treaty not honoring the agreement fully. According to The Observer, Maria Mutagamba said the number of tourists visiting the landlocked country have dropped since the single East African tourist visa system was introduced because Kenya and Rwanda are still using their local tourist visa. “We embraced it wholeheartedly, but our brothers and sisters in the two countries while they introduced the East African visa, they also maintained their local tourist visa,” Matagamba said, adding that Uganda was planning to reintroduce its local tourist visa too.

Under the tripartite agreement know as “Coalition of Willing”, the three countries were supposed to stop issuing local tourists visas and adopt the $100 multi-entry visa that would allow tourists to access the three East African countries within 90 days using one visa. Tanzania and Burundi, which are also member of the East African Community did not join the other three. “The tourism sector is agitated. They say; ‘we must have our own tourism visa as Uganda’ so that we can also get our tourists coming here directly until we all agree that we are going to have one (tourist visa),” Matagamba said. There were worries that Uganda would not benefit from the Schengen visa-like agreement since Kenya and Rwanda normally attract more tourists.

“For us (Uganda) to benefit from this arrangement, the government of Uganda must invest in marketing,” Amos Wekesa, the proprietor of Great Lakes Safaris, told eturbonews.com. Kenya invests about $20 million in marketing their tourism industry and Rwanda spends about $5 million annually. In comparison, Uganda only injects about $300,000 into marketing its tourism attractions. The uptake of the single tourist visa was slower in 2014 with only 1,000 issued by November that year, but gathered pace in 2015 where over 4,000 were issued, according to the Standard. However, tourist numbers to the region has slowed down over the last two years as increased insecurity threat posed by Somalia-based Islamic militants Alshabaab keep western tourists at bay.

Source: AFK

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