It has been a while since we spoke but we never left. Let's talk Africa just a bit more! Steemfest 2 is near and will hold in Lisbon Portugal and along with this has been beautiful incentives and projects set up to initiate the dreams of many steemians!
for instance, has a crowdfunded project up and running to fund the trip for select steemians, to SteemFest 2.
But what is the case with Africa as well as many other developing nations, when it comes to visiting Europe and attaining tourist visas to developed nations in general?
For many of these nations, it is not totally about expenses or fully paid trips. For many of these nation, more is required to travel or get that Schengen visa stamped on your passport. Yes, funds can be raised for the trip by many but is that sufficient?
In many of this nations, way more is require when it comes to getting a tourist visa. Embassies in these nations, already have the pre-mined notion that an average African is looking to elope into more developed nation for greener pasture. Apart from that embassies are usually flooded with visa applications daily because the truth is many people are constantly applying for visas and embassies can only grant a number of tourist visas yearly.
There is no doubt, that they are going to be needing to filter the numerous visa applications they receive daily and that is where many other factors come in; like travel history, financial stability, social ties etc with your home country.
For young Africans thus, it becomes a more complicated process to attain a visa to Europe! Even though embassies call it a myth, "older Africans or people with really high-paying jobs, businesses, celebrities, diplomats and especially those who are veterans in their jobs are likelier to get tourists. Proven business individuals etc also fall in the category of Africans, more like to get tourist visas.
Embassies for different countries have different protocols for visa application but it usually falls under two categories; either "non-interview" applications or "interview" applications and in some case, you have to go through both; "regular paper application and an interview".
What is obvious is, even if an African has itinerary covered and accommodation, he will still have to prove sufficiently to an embassy, whether on paper or in an interview, that he will return to his home country and for many Africans, this is the hard part.
Things like a substantial bank statement, big pay slips, property papers etc are hard to come by, for many Africans and this form part of the visa application especially for Europe! In cases where visa application will require sufficient and substantial paper work, how can this be fixed or made easier?
There many real life situations that we are hoping blockchain and especially steem blockchain fixes in the near future and one of the major things we are looking to solve by means of blockchain is certainly the issue of travel visas for Africa and developing nations!
Every human should have equal rights when it comes to exploring the world!
Drop us a line in the comments or join us on discord: