The 2023 Architecture Biennale opened in Venice in May. The 18th edition of one of the most significant international cultural events is curated by Scottish-Ghanaian architect Lesley Lokko and titled Laboratory of the Future. The Biennale’s website quotes Lokko saying: “For the first time ever, the spotlight has fallen on Africa and the African Diaspora, that fluid and enmeshed culture of people of African descent that now straddles the globe”
Despite working on one of the most prestigious exhibitions in the world, some of Lokko’s collaborators were denied visas to travel to Venice. Ironically, paradoxically, and tragically because they are African. Specifically, African ‘young men’. The paperwork from the Italian Embassy in Accra states that there were reasonable doubts on their ‘intention to leave the territory, or state, before the expiry of [their] visa’. In other words, they cannot be trusted to come on a work trip in case they tried to stay in Europe illegally.
This is just one story. There are numerous examples of people who have struggled to get a visa for a work meeting, artists who cannot make it to festivals, journalists who cannot report from certain countries, colleagues who are banned from some countries because of existing visas on their passports, or people who marry a ‘third country national’ and cannot live or go on holiday together.
Visas regimes are not equal or reciprocal. An Italian national can obtain a visa to Sierra Leone on arrival for £30. A Sierra Leonean wishing to travel to Italy for a business meeting must undertake two separate trips to the Italian Consulate in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, over several weeks at eye-watering costs.
Going places for short visits, temporary work, or study is often vital for business and personal development. Visa regimes are vital components of trade agreements and critical in some key sectors of modern economies, from culture and the arts and tourism to tertiary education and research. Yet it is becoming harder for Africans to get visas. Wait times to obtain a short-term visa to the US have exploded. The research project Visa Limbo estimates that the average wait for a visitor just to get an interview appointment for a visa is 111 days. That jumps to 458 days in Nigeria, 425 in Uganda and 370 in Benin.
