Speaker of Parliament Hon Rebecca Kadaga has reiterated the need for African countries to scrap visas for fellow Africans to enable free movement of people of across the ocean.
In her address during the two-day Conference of Speakers of African Parliaments and Senates at the Pan African Parliament in Midrand, South Africa, Kadaga called on African Heads of State to urgently address the issue of visas.
Kadaga said that Africans do not need the proposed African Passport to ease their movement on the continent. She suggested that what Africans really need is the abolition of visas so that Africans can travel easily across the continent, a move that she sees as one that will foster development.
“Instead of issuance of the African passport, what Africans really need is removal of visa restrictions to ease free movement of Africans on the continent. I am the Speaker of the Parliament of Uganda and I do not have the African passport; I also do not know any person with it,” Kadaga said.
Kadaga has been an advocate of free movement, having said the same thing early last month when he urged Foreign Affairs ministers in Africa to work out ways through which African can easily get visa’s to travel to Europe and America, since Europeans and Americans easily travel to Africa visa-free, or get them on arrival.