Russia To Increase Visa-Free Travel With African Nations To Boost Trade & Tourism

Russia is poised to offer more African countries visa-free access to Russia, according to Tatyana Dovgalenko, a director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for Partnership with Africa. Currently, eleven African countries have visa-free travel with Russia today, and expanding this list could help further develop tourism and business connections.

Dovgalenko said that “introducing visa-free travel with the majority of African countries would help develop tourism. Today, Angola, Botswana, Cape Verde, Mauritius, Malawi, Morocco, Namibia, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, Tunisia, and South Africa have visa-free rules for our respective citizens. We are conducting further work with other African countries and hope that this list will expand in the near term. Another aspect is the signing of corresponding agreements on tourism and memoranda. We are working on such agreements with several countries and hope to sign them in the near future.” She was speaking at a Russian State Duma roundtable on the development of tourist and cultural exchanges between Russia and Africa.

In tourism and in other areas of cooperation with the African continent, Russia sees a serious geographical imbalance, Dovgalenko said.

“The leading destination for tourists from Russia is now North Africa, and specifically Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia. For example, 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. As regards African 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.”

Dovgalenko added that “The absence of direct flights also puts the brakes on the development of tourism. Today, we have regular and charter flights with Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Ethiopia, and Seychelles only, and we plan to increase this to include other African destinations.”

This implies there are developing needs to cater for Russian nationals in both beach and safari vacations, with various African countries already in possession of excellent facilities but also needing to familiarize themselves with the Russian language and some aspects of Russian culture.