Why Uganda, Why?
To start off, this blog post has nothing to do with Uganda as a country or its people as we LOVED our time in Uganda. This post is solely about our experience with Uganda’s extremely complicated visa process.
When we first looked into getting a Ugandan visa we noticed how little information there was online. The number of requirements for a Ugandan visa is far greater than all the other countries we’ve been to combined. It’s almost as if the Ugandan government google searched all the possible visa requirements from every country and slapped them together into a single list.
If you want to visit Uganda you’re required to provide potentially the following:
A letter stating the reason for transit and country of destination (Transit)
Cover letter detailing the purpose of the visit
The immigration status of Host if a family visit
Invitation letter from Host if a family visit or conference
Recent passport-size photograph (More details on this difficulty below)
Vaccination Certificate (Covid & Yellow Fever)
Return Ticket
Supporting Documents for Purpose of Visit
Passport bio-data page with a validity of at least 6 months
In addition, we read that for tourist visas for children, you would also need to provide their birth certificates!
To give context Ugandan’s neighbor Kenya has only 2 requirements for their tourist visa which are a valid passport that doesn’t expire in less than 6 months and a return ticket.
Now the requirements alone are tiresome but wait until you actually try to accomplish them!
Are we living in the 1990s?
One of the most frustrating things I can think of is working so hard on something and getting almost to the finish line and discovering a new obstacle. This lovely obstacle came in the form of Ugandan’s website not allowing file sizes greater than 250kb. 250kb!
For those of you who aren’t tech-savvy let me break it down like this. I just took a random photo on my iPhone and the picture size was 3200kb. That’s more than 10x the allowable size for Ugandan’s website. Honestly, I’m not even sure a flip phone from my college days would even be 250kb in size.
So now imagine getting to the end of your application and then discovering that the photos you are trying to submit are way too big to upload. In addition, there aren’t many apps out there that DECREASE the quality of your photos.
We ended up using a random app that allows you to shrink photo sizes. However, after resizing your photo file you have to check to see if a). the quality is still good to be readable and b). if the shrunken size is 250kb or less. This was a fun game we had to play to eventually get to the right size to submit to the Ugandan website.
In addition who the hell knows if that app was safe to use in the first place because it definitely wasn’t a widely used or reviewed app?
Wait, we aren’t tourists?
Another frustration was that the Ugandan visa site was unclear on which visa to get. We were traveling to the country for tourist reasons so naturally, we started the application for a tourist visa. After working through 90% of the application we got to the section where you enter the number of days you’ll be in the country.
We were staying in Uganda for less than 7 days but the tourist visa application wouldn’t allow us to enter a number below 7. Another obstacle! Ugh….
The only visa application that would allow under 7 days is the Transit visa. As we really weren’t there just for transit we weren’t sure if applying for this visa would have issues for us down the road but we had no other choice.
When we got to Uganda even the immigration officer was confused as to why we had applied for the transit visa as we were coming in for tourism. We had to explain our situation and thankfully we didn’t have any issues getting into the country, but having an uncertain feeling when entering a new country is not the best way to start your trip. Just another “benefit” of the Ugandan visa process.
Show me the money
Of all our travels around the world Uganda’s visas were by far the MOST expensive. They charged a steep $50 per person including children. When you compare this to their neighboring country of Kenya, it’s double the price as Kenya does not charge visa fees for children. In addition, the East African tourist visa costs $50 per person and that comes with visa access to Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda so for Uganda to charge that alone seems so unreasonable. To make matters worse the transit visa, which typically is cheaper than a tourist visa, costs exactly the same $50. It almost felt like a money grab when you are comparing the visa prices mentioned above.
We look back on it now and the memory of Ugandan’s visa process still stings a bit. When you compare this to Kenya’s visa, or really any other visa process, it is a night-and-day comparison. Honestly, Ugandan’s visa process truly felt like a high school exam you hadn’t prepared for and felt like you were going to fail. I don’t know why the process is so extensive and difficult to navigate through but I hope they make some serious changes because it’s a major hindrance to seeing such a wonderful country.