Digital Nomads: A new visa wants to lure short-term travellers to South Africa

When Kennedy Adetayo needed to be in Johannesburg, South Africa, for the opening of his company’s new office, the hardest part wasn’t preparing presentations or coordinating the launch. It was getting into the country.

Adetayo, then a regional marketing lead at global brokerage firm Exness, oversaw markets across West, East, and Southern Africa, a role that required constant travel. Within West Africa, the logistics were manageable. But crossing into Southern Africa, particularly South Africa, became a recurring obstacle.

His visa applications were rejected twice.

“I applied twice,” said Adetayo. “One was for the sticker visa (business), which was denied, and I missed my office opening. [The other] was an eVisa, which was approved but had very short validity.”

Stories like Adetayo’s are one reason South Africa has introduced the Meetings, Events, Exhibitions, and Tourism (MEETS) visa, a new programme designed to make it easier for conference organisers to bring international delegates and short-term travellers into the country.

Launched in February 2026, the MEETS visa will allow accredited event organisers to submit bulk applications for conference delegates through a digital platform, promising faster processing and fewer bureaucratic hurdles.

Designed for short-term travellers, including digital nomads, tourists, and conference delegates, the scheme offers a faster route into South Africa for those entering the country for meetings, events, exhibitions, and tourism.

The visa programme is part of the country’s broader plan to position itself as Africa’s leading destination for global events and to remove visa bottlenecks that have long undermined that ambition.

How the MEETS visa works

The MEETS programme shifts visa responsibility partly to event organisers.

Accredited organisers can submit group visa applications for registered delegates through a secure digital portal, reducing paperwork and accelerating approvals. 

“The MEETS visa scheme will allow accredited and reputable event organisers to facilitate and submit group visa applications, subject to the risk profile of the delegates, through a secure digital platform,” the DHA said.

To qualify, organisers must score at least 120 out of 140 points on a compliance scorecard, which evaluates factors such as event scale, regulatory compliance, and delegate management. 

Event organisers must have a minimum of 500 registered event delegates in the past two years, an online delegate register submitted 60 days before the event, and comply with the Safety, Sports and Recreational Events Act. Organisers are also required to enter a formal agreement with the DHA.

Applications are reviewed by an inter-departmental committee involving the Departments of Home Affairs, Tourism, and Trade.

The scheme is part of a broader immigration modernisation drive led by Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber.

The conundrum at the heart of South Africa’s events industry

South Africa is already the continent’s most decorated events hub. 

The International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) ranks it as the top business event destination in Africa and the Middle East. In 2023, the country hosted 98 association meetings that met ICCA’s strict criteria, generating over R2 billion ($110 million) in economic impact.

At the Meetings Africa 2026 conference in Johannesburg, Tourism Minister Patricia de Lille said the industry’s contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) nearly doubled from R371 million ($22.4 million) in 2023 to R690 million ($41.5 million) in 2025, while supporting over 2,600 jobs.

Yet, beneath the rankings and figures lies a contradiction: the country that markets itself as a world-class events destination has long operated a visa system that many users say is slow, unpredictable, and often difficult to navigate without agency help.

Adetayo’s experience reflects that friction. After eventually securing an eVisa for one trip, he ran into problems while travelling through Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport.

“They [officials] assumed my eVisa was fake,” he said. “Their server was down and couldn’t recognise the QR [quick response] code. It was rectified just in time for my flight.”

Even beyond technical issues, he says scrutiny often intensifies when officials see his passport.

“Aside from the extra scrutiny when they find out I’m Nigerian—which is common in many places I’ve travelled—South Africa is a beautiful country,” said Adetayo.

A visa system that deters travellers

For many travellers from non-exempt countries, including much of Africa, attending an event in South Africa has long meant navigating a Kafkaesque process.

Applications are submitted through the outsourcing firm, VFS Global, which acts as an intermediary between applicants and the Department of Home Affairs (DHA). The firm submits applications to the DHA for review before a multi-layered checking process kicks in.

First, a DHA verification team assesses the applications and forwards a recommendation to a Director for Quality Assurance. The Director then confirms which applications meet their rigorous compliance thresholds and those that pose risks.

Final decisions are recorded in the government’s Movement Control System and sent back to the mission or the VFS centre abroad.

The entire process can take weeks or months, and for some applicants, it ends up in rejection without a clear explanation.

The Tourism Business Council of South Africa (TBCSA), a lobby group for sustainable tourism in the country, has said the system undermined its competitiveness as a travel destination.

“Complex, slow, and unpredictable visa processes have undermined South Africa’s ability to compete with other global destinations, particularly in attracting travellers from key long-haul markets such as Europe, North America, and parts of Asia,” Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa, TBCSA CEO, told local publication IOL.

In 2024, a survey by Tourism Update, a South African tourism publication, noted that 71.4% of tourism service providers had lost bookings due to visa delays, while 57.1% reported cancellations caused by visa denials.

As of 2024, nationals from 37 African countries can enter South Africa visa-free, and holders of passports from 37 European countries enjoy the same privilege.

Between 2015 and 2021, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), a research-focused human security organisation, found that South Africa rejected 52% of skilled worker permit applications and 68% of business visa applications annually, often for missing documents or a “negative recommendation from the Department of Labour.” 

“South Africa has a relatively high visa rejection rate, especially if the application lacks specific required information,” said Patricia Oduah-Morah, Partner Relationships Manager at Exness, who frequently travels to the country. “The document verification process can sometimes be slower, which may further delay the overall application.”

The global mobility problem

The frustration is not unique to South Africa. Across the global events industry, visa restrictions have become a defining friction point, particularly for delegates from the Global South.

In 2025, the International Health Economics Association moved its congress from Calgary, Canada, to Bali after delegates faced visa processing delays that stretched for months. Canadian authorities can take up to 18 months to process visa applications from some countries, according to the association.

Similar issues have affected global conferences from the International AIDS Conference to technology gatherings, where African delegates are often denied visas despite applying months in advance.

In 2024, Africa lost about €60 million ($67.5 million) in non-refundable Schengen visa fees, according to research from the LAGO Collective, a Milan-based research and creative firm. 

South Africa sits in an unusual position in this system: its own citizens face visa barriers abroad, while visitors to the country encounter many of the same obstacles.

The MEETS visa is an attempt to address that imbalance, at least for the events industry and for those entering the country for short stays.

A broader digital overhaul

MEETS sits within a wider set of reforms aimed at digitising South Africa’s immigration system.

The Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) system, introduced in phases from October 2025, replaces paper-based visa applications with a digital platform using biometrics and automated document verification.

The Trusted Tour Operator Scheme (TTOS), first launched in February, has also streamlined group travel from China and India, bringing over 25,000 tourists to South Africa in its first six months, according to the DHA.

Another programme, the Screen Talent and Global Entertainment Scheme (STAGES) visa, launched in November, offers 24-hour approvals for international film crews, following visa delays that reportedly cost the country a major Netflix production worth about R400 million ($22 million).

These reforms signal a policy shift in South Africa: immigration processes are increasingly being redesigned around specific economic sectors.

International travellers and digital nomads working in these industries can access these visas with quicker turnaround times. While South Africa remains one of the few countries on the continent offering a digital nomad visa, its required income threshold, about R1 million ($55,000) gross annually, can be a turn-off.

The implementation challenge

Yet, questions remain about how quickly MEETS will deliver results.

Though the programme opened for expressions of interest in February 2026, the online platform for submitting visa applications has not yet launched.

The MEETS visa was announced in mid-2025. Nearly a year later, the DHA has not yet launched the online platform where accredited organisers will submit visa applications.

US-based immigration advisory firm Fragomen says accredited organisers will be required to pay a visa processing fee per delegate once the system becomes operational.

The programme’s requirements, particularly the 500-delegate threshold, may exclude smaller but influential conferences such as niche tech events, academic meetings, and industry summits.

The 60-day advance registration requirement may also not align with the realities of how international conferences are organised, where late registrations and last-minute speaker additions are routine.

There is also lingering scepticism about execution.

South Africa’s immigration system has a history of policy announcements that outpace implementation. The country’s eVisa programme, launched in 2022 with similar promises, has faced technical outages and delays that frustrated applicants.

“I’d rate the rate of difficulty of entering South Africa for events at an eight out of ten,” a tech journalist who travelled to South Africa for several tech conferences in 2025 told me. “It was quite difficult getting by without an agent. But if an agent can get it for you, it’s quicker, just more expensive. I tried getting one [in 2025], and it didn’t go through.”

In 2024, Minister Schreiber’s claim of 94% backlog eradication was heavily criticised by immigration practitioners who reported continued delays, booking slot shortages at VFS offices, and appeals processes that were physically impossible to complete on time.

What MEETS doesn’t solve

Even if MEETS works as planned, it addresses only part of the mobility problem.

Delegates travelling outside accredited conferences will still face the traditional visa process.  It does not resolve the structural bias in rejection rates. An event organiser considering South Africa for an event still has to deal with these logistical challenges. 

The broader issue of visa access for Africans travelling across the continent remains unresolved. Across Africa, nearly half of African countries still require visas for travellers within the continent, according to the African Union.

Several countries, including Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Ghana, have introduced more open visa policies in recent years, competing to attract global conferences and international visitors.

While South Africa’s attempt to ease mobility in the short-term travel sector seems strategic, the motives are primarily economic.

The country’s Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions (MICE) industry was valued at $10.42 billion in 2025, according to TBCSA. Across Africa, the business events market was valued at $16.6 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $65.6 billion by 2032, growing at an annual rate of 17%. 

At that growth rate, the continent’s MICE market would be worth about $22.7 billion in 2025, meaning South Africa currently accounts for more than 40% of the market.

Yet, that figure is a sliver of the global MICE sector, valued at $924.5 billion in 2025 and projected to reach $1.3 trillion by 2030, according to global research firm Mordor Intelligence.

The cost of South Africa’s broken visa system could drag on its ambition. The country lost about R13.3 billion ($804 million) in foreign tourist spending in 2024 due to lagging overseas arrivals, a shortfall the government’s tourist advisers attributed partly to restrictive visa policies. While South Africa dominates Africa’s events market, it captures just over 2% of the global pie, and its own bureaucracy is the main thing standing between it and a larger slice.

If MEETS succeeds—if event organisers can genuinely fast-track visa processing for international delegates, if the digital platform actually launches and functions, if the accreditation process does not become a bottleneck—it could become a template for other African countries to copy-paste.

But if the platform launches slowly, or the accreditation process proves cumbersome, organisers may simply take their events elsewhere.

For now, the scheme remains a promise on a digital portal. But if implemented as planned, MEETS could transform South Africa’s appeal to global workers, making it a benchmark for short-term mobility on the continent.

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