Rejected visa application to Europe cost Africa $68M
Africans paid €60 million ($68 million) for European short-term visa applications that ended up being rejected in 2024.
That comprised 40% of the total amount the European Union received from fees for rejected visa applications.
Comoros, Senegal, Guinea Bissau, Nigeria, and Ghana had the highest rejection rates for EU visas in 2024, above 45% in each case. But the African countries that experienced the highest year-on-year increases in the cost of rejected visas in 2024 were Eritrea, Botswana, and DR Congo, according to LAGO Collective, a research and creative organization based in London.
The agency's analysis concluded that rejected visas are disproportionately more expensive for low- and middle-income countries.
'The financial cost of rejected visas is just staggering,' said Marta Foresti, LAGO Collective's founder. 'You can think of the costs of rejected visas as 'reverse remittances' — money flowing from poor to rich countries — which we rarely hear about,' she said.
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