Ghana launched its first-ever e-visa system on May 25, 2026 — Africa Day — with President John Dramani Mahama inaugurating the portal at evisa.immigration.gov.gh. African passport holders can now enter Ghana visa-free.
But for everyone else, the price tag is steep.
A single-entry e-visa under standard processing costs $260. Priority processing bumps that to $338. Express, five-hour processing runs $442. Multiple-entry visas go from $468 at the standard tier all the way to $796 for urgent applications.
By comparison, Rwanda charges $50 for a single entry. Kenya charges $51. Tanzania charges $50. Ethiopia, the most expensive of the major East African e-visa markets before Ghana’s launch, charges $82 for a 30-day single entry.
Ghana is not just the priciest e-visa in West Africa. It may be the most expensive tourist e-visa on the continent.
The free-for-Africans policy is a genuine reform — previously, African Union nationals paid up to $150 for a visa on arrival. Waiving that entirely carries real symbolic weight, especially on Africa Day.
But the cost burden has effectively been shifted onto visitors from the Global South: travellers from Asia, South America, and the Pacific now face fees that no other African government charges.
There is also an unusually large premium baked into the speed tiers. Most African e-visa systems charge a flat fee regardless of processing time. Ghana’s model — where express processing costs 70 percent more than standard — resembles how commercial visa agencies price their services, not how government portals typically operate.
Ghana’s ambition with the new system is clear: a digitally enabled entry process, tighter pre-arrival security screening, and a Pan-African identity marker.
Whether the pricing holds, or gets revised under pressure from the tourism and business travel sectors, will be worth watching.
This article was edited with AI and reviewed by human editors
