Published on : Saturday, November 29, 2014
Zimbabwe and Zambia have launched a new single, shared visa to entice tourists to the mighty Victoria Falls that extent their border expecting to boost tourism in the two countries.
Angola, Botswana and Namibia are set to join the program if the project proves successful in six months and other countries in the region may join later. However, the plan could face confrontation from countries such as South Africa.
The countries whose citizens now need only one visa to enter both Zimbabwe and Zambia includes Canada, Japan, the United States, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, Australia, Sweden and Germany.
The governments of these southern African countries hope to increase the flow of tourists to Victoria Falls, which can be viewed from either country’s side of the Zambezi River.
The proposal has been discussed since 1998, but has gained new drive as it acquired financial support from the World Bank.
The use of univisas spreads in Africa have raised concerns in some countries as it will open the door to immigrants overflow from war-torn countries to comparatively peaceful and stable countries, such as South Africa.
However for Zimbabwe, those worries are minor to hopes that the univisa will encourage a slowly recovering tourism sector.
The Zimbabwe tourism agency reported nearly 53,000 Asian tourists visited last year, with about 70 percent of them from Japan and China.
Following a decade of negative hype over its political state, Zimbabwe aims to attract at least 2 million visitors a year from Asia by 2020.
Tags: Zambia to Boost Tourism
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