We know that nationals of African countries often experience great difficulty obtaining visas to Europe. But what about their ability to travel or emigrate within the continent itself? Examination of the situation in West Africa, where arrangements to make these journeys less tedious exist, but where transport infrastructure is lacking and the trend seems to be towards ever greater distrust of foreigners.
Cited as a model in Africa, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is one of the eight African regional economic communities, the only one to have succeeded in making its space a region of free movement between all of its members. West Africa is characterized by high mobility of people, especially intra-regional, with large variations between countries. However, this mobility is under threat.
West Africans, among the least well equipped in terms of mobility rights outside the region
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In the ranking of the power of passports in the world, established according to the number of countries requiring an entry visa for their holders, the first West African nationalities appear in the 65e (Ghana) and 66e (Cape Verde) ranks out of 94. In last position, Nigeria is at 86e place.
This limited mobility capacity (the refusal rate can be significant) is also observed within Africa. Despite the African Union Protocol on Free Movement adopted in 2018 but ratified by only 4 out of 55 member states, less than a third of intra-African travel is visa-free. For example, the Senegalese need to obtain a visa before departure to travel to 22 African countries, but only impose this obligation on 6 nationalities.
West African Health Organization
While applying for a visa before departure is a restrictive process (in terms of documents to be provided and traveling to the embassy), purchasing a visa on arrival mainly has a financial purpose. Senegalese must purchase a visa on arrival in 9 African countries, and 25 African nationalities must pay for a visa on arrival in Dakar.
Apart from regional agreements, benefits are expected bilaterally. Senegalese enter Mauritania and Morocco without a visa, on a reciprocal basis. On the other hand, if they enter Chad without a visa, Chadians must obtain a visa on arrival in Senegal. With France or Spain, it is on an asymmetrical basis that French and Spaniards enter Senegal without a visa, while Senegalese are often refused a visa before departing for these destinations. West Africa is the most open region in the world, but its citizens can hardly travel outside the region.
A visa-free space but not without controls or obstacles
Since its creation in 1975, ECOWAS had set the objective of ensuring freedom of movement and residence for citizens of the Community among its 15 members. The 1979 Protocol defined the approach, over 15 years, and several texts subsequently came to commit the Member States. For 40 years, West African citizens have been able to travel without a visa, provided with a passport or identity card. This condition is all the more important as, unlike the Schengen area, ECOWAS has not abolished internal border controls. On the contrary, by land, there are multiple border posts and controls are carried out both at the borders and within the States.
“Harassment” on the roads – a euphemism for forced corruption – has been documented for years, with little improvement. Even with all the papers in order, you often have to pay. The absence of papers, whether a travel document or a vaccination record, does not always prevent crossing the border, but it does increase the bill.
Traveling by air is safer, but flights are very expensive and rarely direct, even between major West African capitals.
Trains are non-existent and transport by sea is rare and unsafe. The lack of infrastructure does not facilitate mobility.
In a context of growing insecurity in the region, particularly its Sahelian part, the desire to better control movements is intensifying, justifying the adoption of stricter regulations as well as the development and modernization of border posts.
Legal uncertainty
ECOWAS is an organization that respects the sovereignty of member states and community law generally offers the possibility of mitigating the commitments made. For example, the 1979 Protocol guarantees free entry into the ECOWAS zone, but authorizes member states to refuse that of foreigners “entering the category of inadmissible immigrants under the terms of their laws and regulations in force”, which leaves them wide room for maneuver.
The rules are also respected differently by the Member States. In 2014, they decided to create a Cédéao biometric identity card (ENBIC), which would serve as a travel document. To date, only six states issue it to their citizens. In the same year, a series of acts was adopted, substantially strengthening the right of movement and residence. Until then, freedom of movement was valid for 90 days, beyond which the Community foreigner had to apply for a residence permit. In 2014, the 90-day limit and the need to apply for a resident card were removed. However, this right has remained unknown in the Community, including police officers, magistrates and lawyers.
In 2024, the ECOWAS Commission launched an advocacy campaign in several countries, with a triple objective: accelerate the deployment of ENBIC, lead to the removal of the 90-day limit and the resident card. Several states still require this card. In others, without necessarily carrying out checks, the authorities are convinced that Community nationals should detain it.
Lack of knowledge of the law is a factor of legal insecurity because citizens may be confronted with difficulties depending on who they are talking to, without being able to assert their rights. Reciprocity in access to jobs is also applied very differently from one country to another.
Legal uncertainty has recently increased with the departure of three Member States. Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger left ECOWAS in January 2025 after creating the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). The AES is also an area of free movement, and its own passports are being created. In order to maintain rights to which citizens are very attached, the AES for its part, and ECOWAS for its part, have declared that they will continue to reciprocally guarantee freedom of movement and the right of residence.
However, these rights no longer benefit from the stability of the multilateral legal framework, but are based on declarations subject to diplomatic vagaries. It is true that the Sahel trio remains a member of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), an area of free movement shared with five ECOWAS states (Benin, Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and Togo), but several practical questions remain open. For example, should AES citizens also be exempt from a resident card? Do they maintain access to jobs on an equal basis with nationals of host countries?
These privileges of community law are being undermined within ECOWAS itself.
Nationalism and xenophobia
The departure of the three Sahelian states took shape in a regional context
– as global – of the rise of nationalism. It is in the name of defending their sovereignty that they announced in 2023 their intention to leave ECOWAS, considered to be under external influence.
The military in power share with the new Senegalese leaders, as well as with a large part of West African youth, a sovereignist and pan-Africanist aspiration, which mainly translates into “dégagisme”.
Niger’s new regime also immediately repealed a law to combat migrant smuggling, adopted in 2015, seen as serving the interests of Europe, which led Niamey to violate the rules of free movement in ECOWAS. European countries are effectively exerting pressure on West African states to lead them to strengthen mobility controls, contain migrants, develop the biometricization of identity and travel documents, and develop strategies to combat irregular migration. They thus influence policies and the narrative around migration and undoubtedly contribute to the stigmatization of migrants and the politicization of the migration issue.
Read more: Deterring would-be migrants: why EU campaigns are failing
Nationalism and stigmatization are not new in the region, but they are on the rise, in a context where, from the United States to Europe and as far as Africa, otherness is vilified and rights openly flouted.
Collective expulsions of West African citizens have been carried out by local leaders, despite pan-Africanist speeches, without condemnation by ECOWAS institutions. In certain countries, it is sometimes in the name of patriotism that groups call for the expulsion of West African neighbors, advocate national preference, demand border restrictions, designate certain nationalities as responsible for all the ills of society and reserve denigrating names for them.
Faced with this racism which often has ancient roots, but tends to be obscured by a discourse of African brotherhood, ECOWAS leaders have every interest in promoting West African migration and supporting the status of “community citizens”.
The performativity of discourses on migration no longer needs to be demonstrated and it is by improving the narrative that we can best contribute to West African unity and endogenize the discourse on migration. It is still a question of knowing it because intra-regional migration is today much less documented than African migration towards the West, at the heart of all attention. The same is true of ECOWAS law, which is insufficiently known and taught in the region.
It is essential to counter false information about the presence and impact of foreigners, and to develop knowledge and awareness to promote living together.
