Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS)

ECCAS records a marginally higher average openness score in 2025 (0.327) compared to 2024 (0.320). Only two Member States updated their visa policies: Angola made one policy change, while Equatorial Guinea made four - citizens of Chad, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, and Gabon now enter visa-free to all members of ECCAS. DRC now offers visa-free entry to citizens of Senegal. Notwithstanding these incremental changes, most ECCAS Member States maintain generally restrictive visa regimes and rank in the bottom quarter of the index. Burundi and Rwanda are the notable exceptions.

ECCAS is one of four RECs where visa-free access on a reciprocal basis applies to fewer than half of the intra-regional travel scenarios (38%). However, this represents an improvement over last year (2024: 33%). These changes are mainly driven by Equatorial Guinea’s significantly more liberal visa policy with respect to four other ECCAS Member States. While the treaty establishing ECCAS, as a founding principle, seeks the ‘progressive abolition between Member States of obstacles to the free movement of persons, goods, services and capital and to the right of establishment’, practical implementation has been mainly within the CEMAC bloc, comprising Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon. Following Equatorial Guinea’s policy changes, CEMAC countries within ECCAS now fully reciprocate visa-free access, an important sub-regional milestone on easing the movement of persons and supporting economic and monetary integration.

Among ECCAS, three countries (Angola, DRC, and São Tomé and Príncipe) apply the most restrictive visa policies towards citizens of other members, with the latter two applying seven visa-required (ahead of travel) policies each, and Angola eight. While neither are members of CEMAC, the regional visa-free reciprocity score would increase substantially if changes leading to visa-free entry to citizens of fellow ECCAS countries more broadly were to be implemented. Although Burundi’s visa policies are the least-aligned with its regional ECCAS peers, offering a visa on arrival in all but two scenarios (visa-free access for citizens of Rwanda and DRC), it is now the second-highest ranked ECCAS member state on the index and a new entrant in the top 10 on the AVOI overall.