Despite many reasons to visit Mozambique, the country’s challenging visa process deterred potential tourists and business travelers, holding back the country’s competitiveness in the region and more widely.  Welcome change came about in December 2022, when the Government of Mozambique (GRM) launched a new streamlined e-visa platform.  The GRM followed in March 2023, with visa-free entry for tourism and business purposes to citizens of 29 countries, including the United States. Travelers are now able to register on the e-visa online platform before their travel and pay a nominal processing fee of MZN650 (around 10 USD).  

USAID’s Supporting the Policy Enabling Environment for Development (SPEED) Project played a key role by advocating with the GRM on the need to make it easier for foreign individuals and companies to visit and invest in Mozambique. According to SPEED’s Delivery Unit Advisor working with the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Fabio Scala, “This reform presents a huge potential to unlock revenue to the country.” An important factor is the ease that an investor now finds when traveling to the country to evaluate, conduct due diligence, and implement projects in other sectors. In fact, the U.S. State Department’s 2023 Investment Climate Statement for Mozambique has welcomed this change as a significant reduction of red-tape for visiting businesspeople.  

In the short term, more visitors are expected, boosting demand for hotel rooms and restaurants and providing direct cash injections into the economy. In the longer term, Mozambique’s trade and agriculture sectors will also benefit from additional traffic and investments spurred by the reform.  Scala notes, “...even in the COVID year of 2021, there were over 64,000 people employed by the tourism sector and about US$60 million in investment proposals approved for the sector. Overseas visitors spent an average of 4 days and US$900 in the country.”

In the two months after the e-visa platform launch in December 2022, the GRM received more than 10,000 visa applications—a 34 percent increase in visa applications by foreigners compared to the same period last year. The visa waiver decree is expected to spur even more foreign interest, with some forecasts predicting as much as an 80 percent increase in visitors this year compared to last.

Leading up to the reform, SPEED conducted a high-level analysis and worked closely with the private sector to advocate to ease foreign investments in Mozambique. Informed by private sector views expressed at Mozambique’s 2022 private sector conference (CASP) and policy guidance from the SPEED Project, the GRM prioritized visa reform and subsequently released a specific measure on visa reform in the August 2022 Plano de Aceleração de Economia (PAE), or “economic acceleration package.” The measure proposed much-needed improvements to the visa process, including: 1) issuing visa waivers for low immigration risk countries, 2) offering business visas on arrival at airports, and 3) launching an e-visa system for digital processing and payments before departure.

This visa reform is one of around 20 other policy priorities identified in the GRM’s latest PAE, developed with SPEED’s support. The project also facilitated improvements to Mozambique’s national airports and logistic corridors, which has already resulted in a 9% increase of vehicle border crossings (with shorter wait times) at the pilot site, the Ressano Garcia border. As expert Fabio Scala pointed out, more vehicle traffic “…means trade, more jobs, and more revenue.” 

The SPEED Project will continue to support the GRM to develop, pilot, and implement policy reforms—like this one—that bring in more revenue, jobs, and benefits to the country.