Every year, millions of Africans travel outbound for the rest of the world. They leave home either to resettle permanently, pursue educational or career opportunities, seek medical care, or even simply for vacations to experience foreign cultures. Whatever the reason is, this desire to move, as is inherently human, is met often by a complex, sometimes opaque systems that dictate who gets to cross borders overseas. For beneath this flux, Africans face a steep, unusual climb shaped by official processes and gatekeeping mechanisms which determine access in their pursuit for global mobility.
But beyond this administrative hurdle lies the financial toll especially for Africans. As of March 2025, a standard EU Schengen visa fee was pegged at €110, (from last year’s €90) but additional costs such as travel insurance, biometric fees, transportation to embassies, and courier charges can bump up expenses to nearly double the official fee in a single attempt. In contrast, UK visas can range between £115 – £963.
Putting this in perspective, Nigeria’s national minimum wage, for instance, sits at ₦70,000 per month (approximately €35) meaning the cost of applying for a Schengen visa can easily consume or exceed entire months of salary for the average Nigerian worker. In Ghana, where the minimum wage stands at about GHS 539.19 per month, the €110 visa fee around GHS1,523 represents more than two months of wages. Even for middle-income earners, these expenses are substantial as it carries no refund guarantee if the visa is denied.
The Toll of Denial
Abigail Jacob (not her real name), a Lagos-based cloud engineer, was sponsored to travel to London earlier this year to attend a tech convention she’d been earlier selected for. The $2000 sponsorship by the organisers, also backed with support from her employer meant that she had enough financial backing to support her trip. In February, she submitted her UK visa application complete with the required documentations alongside the invitation letter from the event organiser, and a permission letter from her employer.
Through the days and weeks following her application, though anxious, she grew enthusiastic about the possibilities which the convention promised. The connections, lessons, the opportunities, and beyond. This all excited her. To Abigail, the trip, which was to be her first overseas, was a personal breakthrough, a major milestone for a Nigerian woman in tech like herself.
Weeks later however, Abigail received a rejection letter from the embassy. The decision cited her lack of travel history, and insufficient ties to Nigeria —or better put, as she shared, her lack of convincing reason for why she’d return home. It mentioned also that she was financially unfit despite her being sponsored. The news crushed her.
“I cried that night,” Abigail recalled to Diaspora Africa of when she received the rejection email. “All my dreams, everything I planned, all gone. I missed an opportunity I’ll never get back.”
While heartbreakingly personal, Abigail’s story is just one of the countless others of similar disappointment faced by Africans annually in their quest for global mobility.
Just last month, LAGO Collective, a London-based research and arts organization, released an analysis showing that African applicants face the highest rejection rates for EU Schengen and UK visas globally. According to the analysis, in 2024 alone, African individuals lost about $70 million in non-refundable visa fees due to denied applications.
Source: LAGO Collective
These figures represent hundreds of thousands who, mostly in good faith, fulfilled application requirements only to be denied entry. Their stories are told often in the news, on social media, and on migration forums. But year in and out, still, the pattern remains unchanged.
Ten years ago, African applicants faced an 18% rejection rate for Schengen visas, already significantly higher than the global average of 5% at that time. By 2022, that disparity had widened: African countries faced an average rejection rate of 30% compared to a global average of 17.5%. The following year, financially, the consequences were tangible: Africans lost approximately $61 million (from 704,000 applications denied) in non-refundable visa application fees to European states.
These high rejection rates are not limited to Europe. In the United States, data obtained by Shorelight and the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration revealed that in 2022, 54% of African student visa applications were rejected, compared to just 21% for applicants from North America and 9% from Europe.
This signifies a dire problem.
Professor Mehari Taddele Maru, a migration policy scholar at the European University Institute, argues that the European visa regime is notably more stringent towards African applicants than those from other regions. In 2022, for instance, he notes that while Africa topped the list of rejections with 30% of all processed applications being turned down, it by comparison had the lowest number of visa applications relative to global valuations. This suggests, he explains, a predetermined bias against African applicants, influenced by factors such as low passport power and economic status.
Similarly, Marta Foresti, the founder of LAGO Collective recently shared an observation with CNN. According to her, “The poorest countries in the world pay the richest countries in the world money for not getting visas.” She revealed further that as of 2023, the rejection rate per country was directly proportional to how poor the country of application was, suggesting an “inbuilt discrimination and bias” in the process. Per further analysis for that same year, although African countries accounted for 2.8% of global Schengen visa applications, yet it faced a rejection rate of 50%, a stark contrast to the global average rejection rate of 16%.
This data, and all of it, reveals a broader pattern of unequal treatment in global mobility systems, where African applicants face higher barriers despite often meeting stated requirements. Of course, this has had some critics thinking about possible ailments, asking critical questions, such like:
Can Refunds Work?
In light of the staggering financial losses suffered by Africans from visa denials, most notably, Hakainde Hichilema, the President of Zambia, came out and publicly urged the European Union and the United Kingdom to adopt a refund system of visa fees from all rejections. He described it as a matter of fairness and accountability, arguing that people should not pay for access where they’re ultimately denied. In reality, his statement reflects a growing frustration across the continent.
One might ask: Is this call feasible, though? In truth, most visa application fees are categorized legally as “service fees” paid to cover the administrative cost of processing the applications, not the outcome. Countries make it clear that the fees are non-refundable, regardless of whether a visa is granted. This policy is standard in visa regimes across Europe, the UK, the US, and beyond.
Even so, some critics argue that charging full fees to applicants from countries with consistently high rejection rates, without transparency or feedback, borders on exploitation. At the very least, some suggest there should be a partial refund or clear appeal mechanisms for denied applicants, especially those who met all the requirements. At present though, whether a refund policy is politically viable remains uncertain.
Rethinking the System
As conversations around visa fairness grow louder, some are beginning to ask: what would a just and equitable mobility system for Africans and therefore, the rest of the world look like?
For starters, the use of “migration risk” as a blanket reason for refusal as a common default in visa denials is both outdated and discriminatory. Many applicants are denied without any explanation, often after complying with every documented requirement. That opacity reinforces a power imbalance in which African applicants are expected to trust systems that offer no transparency in return.
Reform could begin with the implementation of clear and accessible appeal processes, as well as training for visa officers on equity, migration justice, and anti-racism. Beyond that, multi-year and multiple-entry visas, or fast-track options for frequent travelers, would reflect real-world patterns many Africans travel for business, study, or family, and must reapply multiple times for the same routes.
More fundamentally, there needs to be a shift in mindset indicating that mobility is a right, not a privilege. Africans and other citizens of the Global South should not be presumed guilty or deceptive simply because of the passports they carry. Migration policies must be grounded in data, not in inherited biases, folk tales, or unfounded fears. Without these reforms, the global mobility system will remain deeply imbalanced, an architecture that profits from exclusion, while punishing those who dare to move.
Writer: Prosper Ishaya
Editors: Amaka Obioji, Chimee Adịọha
Image: Global Residence Index/Unsplash