Cape Town - South Africa’s electronic visa system is set to be expanded to include more countries in the wake of a successful trial run.
The system will be made available to people visiting from China, India and Nigeria.
E-visas for other countries are expected to be rolled out in phases. More countries will be added every financial year until every country requiring a visa to visit South Africa has been accounted for.
“The e-visa system is primarily aimed at contributing to job-creation; this will be done by making it easier for tourists wanting to visit South Africa to do so,” said Department of Home Affairs media manager David Hlabane.
South Africa began to trial it’s e-visa system in November last year for visitors from Kenya flying to OR Tambo and Lanseria airports.
“The programme will ensure quicker turnaround time and give applicants full control of the application process from the comfort of their homes and thus boost tourism numbers,” Hlabane said.
The expansion of South Africa’s e-visa programme follows a global trend according to Benjamin Boesch, chief digital officer for VFS Global, a technology services company that works with governments to implement and administer visa services.
“Today’s travellers, while deciding on destinations, make it a point to do a search on countries that provide e-visas, thereby driving inbound travel for those countries,” Boesch said. “Airports are upgrading their technological solutions to ensure biometric check-ins of travellers in the near future.”
Hlabane said the electronic system “will ensure acceptable fingerprints-quality capture at application or port of entry and improve turnaround times for visa applications”.
On protecting information gathered on individuals, Hlabane said: “The department has additional security measures in place to secure personal information of applicants which cannot be communicated to the public.”
Boesch said application for an e-visa would not take place entirely on a digital platform. “While one part of the visa application process can be fully digitised, biometric enrolment will still happen at a visa application centre. This is primarily because physical enrolment of biometrics continues to be an important aspect of border control norms today.
“I believe many governments prefer a process where every application is screened extensively and, more importantly, where biometric data is being collected in advance to check the fingerprints and faces against existing databases.”