Kenyan President William Ruto declared on December 12 that foreign visitors would not require a visa to enter the nation as of January 1 2024, a bold step towards promoting tourism and international relations.
There will be specific steps which the travellers will have to follow before landing in Kenya.
- Before arriving by plane, travellers planning to visit Kenya will need to register on an electronic platform.
- It was mentioned that the visitors would receive an Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) after completing the registration process.
- Before being granted an ETA that is electronically linked to a passport or other travel document, verification is required with a valid passport or other travel document.
- Even with the removal of the need for a visa, travellers will still need to pay several thousand shillings in order to receive an ETA. In a gazette notice published in November, the Ministry of Interior set the ETA fee at $30 (roughly Sh4,600 at the current exchange rate).
- The gazette notice stated that visitors would have needed to pay $100 (Sh15,340) for a single entry visa, $500 (Sh76,700) for a multiple entry visa, $160 (Sh24,544) for a five-year multiple entry visa, and $200 (Sh30,680) for an extension of the visa after six months if the visa-free directive that went into effect in January 2024 hadn’t been in place.
According to Ruto, the creation of a digital platform is necessary for the implementation of this new policy in order to guarantee that every visitor to Kenya is registered in advance on an electronic platform.
Kenya is about to put into effect Ruto’s October announcement that all Africans would no longer need a visa if they enter the country by the end of December. The President claimed that African nations were being harmed by visa restrictions during a speech in Congo-Brazzaville. It was declared that, in keeping with Kenya Kwanza’s goal to promote borderless trade and tourism, no African would need a visa in order to enter Kenya by the end of the year.
