Editorial: Open borders, many questions 

The sentiment is admirable. President John Mahama’s announcement that Ghana will open its borders to all African passport holders from May 25 (Africa Day)  carries the warm glow of Pan-African idealism that this country has long claimed as its birthright.

From Kwame Nkrumah’s vision of continental unity to the ‘Year of Return’, Ghana has never been shy about casting itself as Africa’s welcoming hearth. The e-visa development builds on what ex President Akufo-Addo started during his tenure – and the symbolism of the date is deliberate and stirring.

But sentiment, however warm, is not policy. And policy, however well-intentioned, must be stress-tested against reality. The question policymakers must answer,  honestly – not rhetorically, is whether the country has the institutional architecture to absorb an open-border regime without inviting the very instability it has so far managed to avoid.

Consider the security backdrop against which this announcement lands. The Sahel insurgency is no longer a distant northern problem. JNIM and Islamic State Sahel Province have systematically pushed southward from Mali and Burkina Faso – turning Benin and Togo into active conflict frontlines, with fatalities in Benin rising 70 percent in 2025 alone.

The Benin-Niger-Nigeria tri-border zone has become a recognised jihadist operational theatre. Our own northern borders are already being used by Burkina Faso-based militants for logistics, medical resupply and freedom of movement; and surely the fate of our tomato-traders must still be fresh in our minds, no? Against this backdrop, is this the right moment to further loosen conditions of entry into the country?

The insurgency has proven itself adept at exploiting precisely the kind of governance gaps that Ghana still exhibits. Porous borders, weak identity verification and fragmented inter-agency coordination are not hypothetical vulnerabilities. These are documented features of the terrain these groups navigate daily.

Welcoming all 54 African nations’ passport holders on an e-visa system that has not yet been operationally tested to its maximum raises legitimate questions about robustness of the screening process on the other end.

Which brings us to the identification problem. The National Identification Authority (NIA) has made genuine progress, but the national ID infrastructure remains patchy – particularly outside urban centres. If we cannot consistently verify the identity of our own citizens, how do we propose to reliably process and track the entry and exit of visitors from across a continent where document integrity varies enormously? A free visa regime without a robust biometric entry-exit system across all points is less an open door and more unmonitored gate.

None of this is an argument against African free movement as a long-term aspiration. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), headquartered in Accra, makes the logic of freer mobility self-evident. Rwanda, Seychelles, The Gambia and Benin have implemented similar policies – and Ghana has long trailed that peer group on the Visa Openness Index. The direction of travel is correct. The timing and infrastructure-readiness are not.

Ghana’s instinct to lead on Pan-African integration is a genuine comparative advantage on the diplomatic, economic and historic fronts.  But leadership means making hard-headed decisions, not merely generous ones. The Mahama administration would serve the country better by first demonstrating that the e-visa platform is robust enough; that our border agencies are adequately resourced and coordinated; and that a credible security screening framework is in place before the May 25 deadline.

Africa Day should be a celebration of what the continent is building, not a convenient calendar peg for a policy announcement that outruns its own implementation. If Ghana truly wants to be the continent’s model of open, integrated governance, we must show that we can manage openness responsibly. The warm gesture and hard work are not mutually exclusive. But right now, only one of them has been announced.

The post Editorial: Open borders, many questions  appeared first on The Business & Financial Times.

Read Full Story