Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN‑SAD)

CEN-SAD, scoring 0.449, comprises 24 Member States cutting across North, East, West, and Central Africa. Its members are also part of several other RECs, which exposes them to several different REC initiatives on the free movement of people, each with different levels of implementation. This appears to be reflected in CEN-SAD members’ visa policies, which range from open and flexible (e.g. The Gambia) to fully or predominantly restrictive (e.g. Egypt, Libya, Sudan).

Compared to 2024, the region scores lower, recording its lowest average AVOI score since the first edition. Over 180 country-to-country travel scenarios are affected by Member States’ updated visa policies. While 50 of these involve a positive change towards a more liberal visa regime, the rest can be considered more restrictive. In terms of positive changes, Eritrea’s change to a visa-on-arrival policy (affecting citizens of 48 countries) accounts for the bulk of CEN-SAD member’s policy changes that ease intra-Africa travel. Of countries tightening visa requirements, Guinea-Bissau and Mauritania made policy changes that significantly lowered their regional scores. However, both countries’ liberal visa policies towards ECOWAS Members remain intact. Somalia slips 24 positions on the AVOI, making 41 changes from visa-on-arrival to visa-required ahead of travel.

Reciprocity within CEN-SAD

Visa-free reciprocity within CEN-SAD remains unchanged at 33% in 2025. Seen in the context of higher levels of visa-required reciprocity, rising from 18% to 25%, and a halving to 4% for visa-on-arrival reciprocity, this suggests an overall reduction in the ease of movement between Member States as a whole. However, closer scrutiny reveals that that there have been a few country-specific changes relating to reciprocity, albeit not sufficient to change the region’s overall score, while some changes have cancelled out their overall impact (for example, Benin scores slightly lower while Chad and Mauritania advance slightly on their reciprocity scores). Individual (single country) policy tightening is noted from Benin (towards Algeria and Morocco) and Tunisia (towards Benin), reducing the regional reciprocity score.

The twelve countries that score highest on intra-regional visa-free reciprocity are all members or former members of ECOWAS. Countries that ended their membership of the regional bloc have left their liberal visa policies towards ECOWAS countries unchanged, which means that there has also been no negative impact on the visa-free reciprocity score for CEN-SAD.

Currently, nine of the 24 CEN-SAD countries allow visa-free entry on a bilateral basis to citizens of at least half of the remaining Member States, with visa-free reciprocity involving 15 countries representing the highest scores (achieved by Côte d’Ivoire, Niger and Senegal), At the other end of the spectrum, six countries score zero with respect to regional CEN-SAD visa-free reciprocity: Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan. Easing of visa restrictions by these countries would significantly improve regional visa openness, and with that, the regional visa-free reciprocity score.