South Africa plans to ease visa burden for Nigerians

• SAA to be profitable in three years- CEO
• Airlifts 3.5 million passengers in 20 years

The visa bottlenecks between Nigeria and South Africa may soon be a thing of the past as the Chief Executive of South African Airways (SAA); Mr. Vuyani Jarana said they are in talks with the South African Government through its Ambassador with a view to relaxing visa policy for Nigerians who want to visit the Rainbow nation.

This is coming as the airline chief believes that the embattled airline is making steady progress in order to become profitable again.

He stated that the national carrier could see a profit in the next three years, despite a number of challenges, adding that it is the hope that SAA will break even or see some profit by the end of the 2021 financial year.

Not much improvement in the profits of South African Airways (SAA) is expected for the 2018-19 financial year but recently appointed  Jarana, who took up his post in November last year, has brought a new drive and energy to the implementation of the national airline’s turnaround strategy.

The long-term turnaround strategy is expected to yield fruit in three years’ time, but only on the condition that SAA gets more funding from the state to beef up its weak and over-indebted balance sheet.

He equally stated that the carrier airlifted over 3.5 million passengers in the 20 years of service to the country. He attributed the figure to initial restricted flights and much later relaxed seven frequencies to Lagos after many years.

Jarana who made the disclosure in Lagos at an occasion to mark SAA’s 20 years of operations in Nigeria stated that there are attempts now to look at long term visa for frequent visitors, businessmen and others, adding that issuance of multiple visa to these set of Nigerians would help to boost tourism and business in South Africa.

His words, “Nigeria is an important market for South Africa Airways. We are talking with the Ambassador and the government on visa processes. There are attempts now to look at long term visa. We are having changes in those possibilities. When you have volumes coming through, it creates opportunities for business”.

 South Africa is said to be modernising the systems and ease the burdens. In the interim, they are working on recognising valid visa’s from other countries such as USA, U.K .etc, so that, Nigerians with such Visa’s will be given leniency. Africa, Jarana said is indeed open for business, and offers a world of opportunity.

Africa remains largely closed, with Africans still needing visas to travel to over half of the continent, despite the launch of African Passport in July 2016 during AU summit in Kigali.

The Kigali’s AU Assembly reinforced the urgency for the development of the protocol on free movement of persons.

According to the 2017 Africa Visa Openness Report produced jointly by the African Development Bank, the African Union Commission and the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Africa, African countries are on average becoming more open to each other whereby 21 of 55 African countries moved upwards in rank on the Index since 2015.

The report further indicates that 47 countries have improved or maintained their visa openness scores.

However, according to the same report, “Africa’s Upper Middle Income countries as a group have low visa openness scores. Eight out of nine of Africa’s Upper Middle Income countries have low visa openness scores,” while “Africa’s small, landlocked and island states are more open, promoting trade links with their neighbours.”

Speaking on his airline’s 20 years of servicing Johannesburg-Lagos route, The SAA chief further disclosed that Nigeria operations rank amongst SAA’s most profitable, stressing that they want to continue to support this important destination by continuously improving the overall customer experience and exploring new opportunities.

His words, “This will enable us to retain our market position as the carrier of choice amongst the Nigerian travelling community. Our understanding of our customer profiles who travel in both business and economy class cabins, is one of the reasons we decided to deploy the A330-300 aircraft which responds well to the needs of this market”.

With its thriving economy, he reiterated Nigeria is Africa’s economic powerhouse; Lagos is a high-energy city famous for its vibrant lifestyle, set against the backdrop of the Nigerian film industry, Nollywood, and their world renowned music industry bolstered by heavyweights such as the late legendary Fela Anikulapo Kuti to the modern day Davido, DBanj, and Psquare to mention a few. Nigeria offers numerous commercial opportunities and a cultural experience like no other.

  SAA is the leading carrier in Africa, serving 57 destinations, in partnership with SA Express, Airlink, and its low-cost carrier, Mango, within South Africa and across the continent, and nine intercontinental routes from its Johannesburg hub.

 It is a member of the largest international airline network, Star Alliance. SAA’s core business is the provision of passenger airline and cargo transport services together with related services, which are provided through SAA and its wholly owned subsidiaries: SAA Technical; Mango its low-cost carrier; and Air Chefs, the catering entity of SAA.

SAA is the winner of the Best Airline Staff Service award in the Africa category; this shows that our customer-facing employees are our true brand ambassadors who made a difference to millions of travelling customers.