Russian Foreign Ministry working to expand visa-free travel with African countries
MOSCOW. Nov 21 (Interfax) - Eleven countries on the African continent have visa-free travel with Russia today, and expanding this list could help further develop tourism, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department for Partnership with Africa Tatyana Dovgalenko said.
"Introducing visa-free travel with the majority of African countries could help develop tourism. Today, there are 11 African countries - Angola, Botswana, Cape Verde, Mauritius, Malawi, Morocco, Namibia, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, Tunisia, and South Africa. We have visa-free rules for mutual trips of our citizens with these countries. We are conducting further work with other countries and hope that this list will expand in the near term," Dovgalenko said at a Russian State Duma roundtable on the development of tourist and cultural exchanges between Russia and Africa.
"Another aspect is the signing of corresponding agreements on tourism and memoranda. We are working on such agreements with several countries. And we hope to sign them in the near future," she said.
In tourism, like in a large number of other areas of cooperation with the African continent, Russia sees a serious geographical misbalance, Dovgalenko said.
"As it is known, the leading destination for tourists from Russia is North Africa, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia. For instance, 1.5 million Russian citizens visited Egypt in 2024, accounting for 15% of the local tourism industry's revenue. We are behind only Germany by the number of tourists visiting Egypt. At the same time, naturally, as for countries located south of the Sahara, tourism cooperation with them and the tourist flow in general lag behind, and some creative solutions to correct this geographical misbalance are needed," she said.
The absence of direct flights also puts the brakes on the development of tourism, Dovgalenko said.
"Today, we have regular and charter flights only with Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Ethiopia, and Seychelles," she said.
