Africans lost $67.5 million to denied Schengen visa applications in 2024

African applicants lost nearly €60 million ($67.5 million) in non-refundable Schengen visa fees in 2024, according to data from the LAGO Collective, a London-based research group tracking global mobility.

The report reveals that African countries were the hardest hit globally, with high rejection rates and rising application costs. For instance, in Nigeria, over 50,000 short-stay visa applications were denied last year, CNN reported.

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.

“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.

Rejection rates reached as high as 40–50% for countries such as Ghana, Senegal, and Nigeria. She argues this reflects “systemic discrimination and bias” within the visa application process.

The standard Schengen visa fee rose from €80 to €90 in July 2024, increasing the burden for applicants. Unlike many other service fees, visa application charges are non-refundable, even if a visa is denied.

According to Foresti, these financial losses act as “reverse remittances”, with money flowing from poor countries to wealthier European nations with no benefit in return.

A separate report by Henley & Partners supports these claims, showing that African applicants were twice as likely to be rejected as their Asian counterparts in 2023, despite submitting only half as many applications. Six of the ten countries with the highest rejection rates are African.

Comoros leads with a 61.3% rejection rate, followed by Guinea-Bissau (51%), Ghana (47.5%), Mali (46.1%), Sudan (42.3%), and Senegal (41.2%).