Only six African countries enjoy visa-free entry to Russia, not all of them

Published on March 26, 2025 at 11:50
3 min read
By Samad UTHMAN, AFP Nigeria

As the Kremlin deepens its footprint in Africa to counter the influence of the West, a post on TikTok claims Russia has removed visa requirements for all African states. However, this is misleading; only six African countries enjoy visa-free entry to Russia, and an update on the status of a proposed visa-free programme for all African countries has not been announced since a key Moscow diplomat hinted at it in 2023.

“The West is in PANICK as Russia announces visa-free for all African countries (sic),” reads a text overlay on a TikTok video posted on March 13, 2025.

Shared more than 11,000 times, the video’s voice-over claims “Africans will easily move and do business with Russia”, adding that “they [Africans] will find investment opportunities and even decide to live in Russia, unlike the West which makes this so hard (sic)”.

The voice-over refers to a “recent statement” from Moscow diplomat Oleg Ozerov who is quoted as saying that “Russia has established visa-free arrangements with six African nations and is actively pursuing similar agreements with other countries on the continent”.

Ozerov is identified as the ambassador-at-large of the Russian foreign ministry and head of the secretariat of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum.

Screenshot showing the misleading post, taken March 21, 2025

One user wrote, “Nigerians, please don’t mess this up for us,” while another said, “Time to move to Russia.”

The account has more than 54,000 followers and published a similar claim on March 25, 2025.

Screenshot of another misleading post from the same TikTok account, taken March 25, 2025

Russia has been expanding its influence in Africa in recent years, offering security support to the region’s poor countries and kindling anti-Western sentiment (archived here).

As of March 2025, however, agreements exist with only a handful of African countries whose citizens can enter Russia without a visa.

Work in progress

Using keyword searches, AFP Fact Check could not find any recent statement from the Russian government announcing visa-free entry for all African countries.

According to the Russian Consular information portal, only six African countries — out of 54 — have visa-free entry (archived here).

The six countries are Namibia, South Africa, Mauritius, Cape Verde, Botswana and Seychelles.

While Namibians and South Africans can stay in Russia for three months without a visa, people from Mauritius and Cape Verde can only stay for two months and those from Botswana and Seychelles can only stay one month.

The comments attributed to Ozerov in the video are correct, but he made them in September 2023 when he told Russian News Agency Tass that Moscow was working on exempting all African countries from visa requirements (archived here).

"We have visa-free agreements with six countries, and there is certainly ongoing work with other states,” Ozerov was quoted as saying.

He added that how fast such agreements are concluded is “a matter of negotiation”.

Since Ozerov’s remarks in 2023, there has been no update on progress from the Russian government.

Ozerov’s role has also changed: he was the head of the secretariat of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum until September 2024 and is now Russian ambassador to Moldova (archived here).

Meanwhile, in December 2023, Russia's foreign ministry added 11 new countries to the list of states whose citizens can obtain a single electronic visa (archived here).

Three are African nations: Kenya, Eswatini, and Zimbabwe.

The electronic visa allows citizens of these countries to stay for 16 days on a single entry.

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