EVIDENCE: Ghanaians didn’t need visa to go to Mauritius

The bottom left corner of this 2014 billboard on the Kanda Highway reads “No visa required.” Photos credit: Kwame Adjaho

“Ghana and Mauritius have agreed to waive visa requirements for holders of each other’s national passports. It follows the signing of an agreement on mutual visa waiver exemption in Port Louis yesterday as part of the 3-day state visit of President John Mahama.

“The agreement allows all Ghanaians, including holders of ordinary Ghanaian passports to enter into Mauritius without any visa restrictions. The same courtesies will be extended to Mauritius nationals coming to Ghana.”

Above are the first two paragraphs of a story on the Government of Ghana official website headlined: “Ghana & Mauritius waive visa requirements.”

Many people have said the information was misleading because one did not require a visa to enter Mauritius. Some said they went to the southern Africa island in the past without a visa requirement.

I posted on Facebook that I had seen billboards in Accra advertising the tourism potentials of Mauritius and stating that no visa was required to enter Mauritius. Some friends who commented said they or their friends had gone to Mauritius without any visa, long before President Mahama went to Mauritius.

Kwame Adjaho, a cameraman with TV3, said he took pictures of the billboard I was referring to and generously supplied them. He took these photographs on May 23, 2014.

Photo credit: Kwame Ajaho

The bill board was near the Kawokudi traffic light, on the Kanda Highway near the magnificent mosque. It bore the inscription: Live your dreams in Mauritius. On the bottom left corner was an inscription: “No visa required.”

So the question is: why are government communicators telling us that President Mahama’s visit to  Mauritius two weeks ago gave us the privilege we were enjoying more than a year ago?  Or are there specific technicalities about this arrangement we mortal beings do not know?