An Aerial View travel guide
Do you need to apply before you fly?
A growing number of African countries now ask you to apply for entry permission online before you travel, even without a visa. Miss it and you can be turned away at boarding.
We track what each scheme actually asks for, so you can sort it out before you book, not after.
Needs one
Seychelles
Compulsory for everyone
Needs nothing
Rwanda
Visa on arrival, no pre-travel step
🇳🇬 Nigeria
Mandatory e-Visa (replaced visa on arrival)
Mandatory e-Visa (replaced visa on arrival) · since 2025-05-01
All nationalities that require a visa. ECOWAS citizens remain visa-free and are unaffected.
It's required for every traveller who previously used visa on arrival.
Fee schedule varies by nationality and is set partly on a reciprocity basis. Figures circulating online are inconsistent, take them from the NIS portal only.
You can't get it on arrival. It has to be sorted before you fly.
Applications are screened against international databases before approval; airlines can deny boarding without an approval email.
Airlines check for it before you board, so travelling without it can mean not flying at all.
Good to know
The subject of the first piece in this series. Announced 21 February 2025, visa on arrival phased out from 1 May 2025, Nigeria Visa Policy 2025 introduced that month. Framed as security and efficiency modernisation. Henley currently scores Nigeria 83rd in the world, admitting 19 of 198 nationalities without a prior visa, the two indices agree here, unlike Seychelles and Guinea-Bissau. Nigeria is also the nationality most often carved out elsewhere: barred from Mozambique's online channel, placed in Tanzania's Referral Visa category, and excluded from Tanzania's Commonwealth waiver.
Sources
Still confirming: e-Visa fee schedule from the NIS portal, by nationality; Stated processing time and whether it is met in practice; Reconcile the report's 32nd placing against its own country table, which appears to differ; Nigeria's AVOI 2025 score
Checked 2026-08-07.
All 54 countries we cover
- Algeria
- Angola
- Benin
- Botswana
- Burkina Faso
- Burundi
- Cabo Verde
- Cameroon
- Central African Republic
- Chad
- Comoros
- Congo
- Côte d'Ivoire
- Djibouti
- DR Congo
- Egypt
- Equatorial Guinea
- Eritrea
- Eswatini
- Ethiopia
- Gabon
- Ghana
- Guinea
- Guinea-Bissau
- Kenya
- Lesotho
- Liberia
- Libya
- Madagascar
- Malawi
- Mali
- Mauritania
- Mauritius
- Morocco
- Mozambique
- Namibia
- Niger
- Nigeria
- Rwanda
- São Tomé and Príncipe
- Senegal
- Seychelles
- Sierra Leone
- Somalia
- South Africa
- South Sudan
- Sudan
- Tanzania
- The Gambia
- Togo
- Tunisia
- Uganda
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
Travelling somewhere not listed yet?
We're adding new countries as we confirm the details. Join the Aerial View community and we'll let you know as new destinations, trips and travel guides go live.
Explore Aerial ViewRules change without much notice, and we recheck each one on its own schedule. Last updated 2026-09-19. This page is a starting point for planning, not legal or immigration advice, always confirm with the destination country before you travel.
Curious about the numbers behind the destinations? See Tourism at a Glance. Not sure what you can pack? See what you can't carry across Africa.