Mozambique’s new e-visa system could attract 10 million visitors a year by the end of 2025, Eldevina Materula, the Minister of Culture and Tourism, has said.
The e-visa is in the initial stage of implementation, and it aims to promote a greater flow of tourists and business people to the country, Materula said, in line with the government’s 20 Measures of Economic Acceleration (PAE).
The e-visa is one of the PAE’s principal measures, and Materula said she hopes “that the impact will be that we can achieve the desired target of 10 million by 2025.”
The e-visa, said Materula, will simplify the application process and will also fight corruption, improve the business environment, stimulate good governance, attract more foreign investment and drive tourist activity.
In the first half of 2022, Mozambique recorded about 350,000 international visitors, compared with some 200,000 for the same period in 2021, representing an increase of 64 per cent.
In 2017, after the introduction of the frontier visa for tourism, 1.5 million visitors were recorded. This rose to more than 2.9 million in 2018, an increase of 89 per cent. Tourism revenue rose from US$150 million in 2017, to US$241 million in 2018, an increase of 60 per cent.
Tourism was severely hit by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and has yet to recover. However, Materula was optimistic that within a fairly short time, tourist numbers will again be numbered in the millions.
