CNN — When Joel Anyaegbu’s application for a Schengen visa to travel to Barcelona was denied late last year, he was surprised but immediately reapplied. He sent in more documents than were required, including bank statements and proof of property ownership in Nigeria.
He was rejected again.
“The information submitted regarding the justification for the purpose and conditions of the intended stay were not reliable,” read a checklist returned with his passport from the Spanish consulate in Lagos. The 32-year-old gaming consultant said he felt humiliated.
“I had to cancel meetings with partners at the conference I was attending,” he told CNN. “I emailed the embassy to understand why I was denied but it has not been answered to date.”
Anyaegbu’s was among the 50,376 short-stay Schengen visa applications rejected in Nigeria last year, nearly half of all submissions, according to newly released data from the European Commission.
Applicants worldwide pay a non-refundable visa fee of 90 euros (about $100), so Nigerians alone lost over 4.5 million euros (about $5 million) seeking permission to travel to the 29 European countries that make up the Schengen Area.
In total, African countries lost 60 million euros ($67.5 million) in rejected Schengen visa fees in 2024, analysis from the LAGO Collective shows. The London-based research and arts organization has been monitoring data on European short-term visas since 2022 and says Africa is the continent worst affected by the cost of visa rejections.
“The poorest countries in the world pay the richest countries in the world money for not getting visas,” its founder Marta Foresti told CNN. “As in 2023, the poorer the country of application, the higher the rejection rates. African countries are disproportionately affected with rejection rates as high as 40-50% for countries like Ghana, Senegal and Nigeria.” She says this proves “inbuilt discrimination and bias” in the process.
A European Commission spokesperson told CNN that member states consider visa applications on a case-by-case basis. “Each file is assessed by experienced decision-makers on its own merits, in particular regarding the purpose of stay, sufficient means of subsistence, and the applicants’ will to return to their country of residence after a visit to the EU,” the spokesperson said via email.
Africans have long complained about inconsistent, sometimes baffling decisions about who gets approved or denied while applying for European visas. Cameroonian Jean Mboulé was born in France but when he applied for a visa in 2022 alongside his wife using similar documents, his application was rejected but hers was not.
“At the time she was unemployed but with a South African passport. She had no income but received a visa on the back of my financial statement,” he told CNN. “But the embassy said they refused my application because my documents were fake, and they weren’t sure I would come back to South Africa, where I am a permanent resident, if I went to France.”
The 39-year-old regional executive took legal action in French courts and won, forcing the French embassy in Johannesburg to grant his visa and pay him a fine of 1,200 euros.
He told an administrative tribunal in the French city of Nantes that the embassy’s decision to deny him a visa was “tainted by insufficient reasoning.”
Mboulé pointed out that he had provided sufficient guarantees that he would return at the end of his trip to his wife and daughter in South Africa where he owns a building. After he got the visa, he chose to go to Mauritius instead as he didn’t want to spend his money in France.
The Cameroonian’s case is unique as many Africans denied Schengen visas rarely appeal or contest the decisions in court. Like Anyaegbu, the Nigerian gaming consultant, they often reapply, losing more money in the process. Mboulé has travelled several times to the UK and other African countries but was still denied twice for Schengen.
“The financial cost of rejected visas is just staggering; you can think of them as ‘reverse remittances,’ money flowing from poor to rich countries, which we never hear about,” the LAGO Collective’s Foresti says. Schengen visa fees increased from 80 to 90 euros in July 2024, making it even more expensive for the world’s poorest applicants.
But South African management lecturer Sikhumbuzo Maisela said the visa rejection rates for Africans were lower than he expected. “The visa vetting process seems to be shaped less by outright prejudice and more by historical patterns of behaviour,” he told CNN via email.
“Western countries have had instances where visa holders overstayed or violated terms, and this has influenced how future applications are scrutinized.”
Though he hasn’t conducted formal academic research on the issue, Maisela said Africans should treat visas as an act of trust and hospitality, and observe the rules.
“When one person violates these principles, it impacts all of us,” he said. “It makes it harder for the next applicant — someone who may be fully compliant — to be granted the same opportunity. So, in a way, those who break the rules contribute to the very discrimination others face.”
Younger Africans are the most vocal about visa rejections online but older applicants face similar barriers. Julius Musimeenta, a 57-year-old Ugandan engineer, applied for a visa to attend an engineering fair in Munich last year with his family. All six of them were rejected even though they had all previously traveled to Europe.
“Africans contribute a lot to funding these embassies through these rejections. They always think negatively about us travelling to their countries,” he told CNN. He has three grown-up children who are also engineers and the entire family has a long history of international travel so they were surprised by the blanket denial, he says.
The European Commission said it does not comment on individual cases but EU law allows visa applicants to appeal negative decisions if they feel that the refusal was unjustified.
“The reasons for refusals vary, and include for example the submission of false or forged supporting documents such as bank statements or civil status documents, and weak socio-economic ties to the country of residence and hence a heightened risk of irregular migration,” it said.
While Schengen visa rejections get the most attention due to the large number of countries, African applicants to the UK complain of similar access challenges.
UK visa fees rose from £100 to £115 in July 2024 ($134 to $154) and then to £127 ($170) in April this year. There was a 13.5% spike in the cost of rejected visas to £50.7 million ($68.8 million) in 2024, the LAGO Collective estimates. Nigerians alone paid an extra £2 million trying to travel to their former colonial master, according to its calculations.
