Senegal has one of the largest student communities in France. The French ambassador, Christine Fages, gave this information, maintaining that more than 60% of short-stay Schengen visas are granted to Senegal. European diplomats also returned to the chaotic process of obtaining appointments in consulates due to the presence of intermediaries…
By Amadou MBODJI – Senegal has the fifth largest foreign student community in France, with some 15,000 students: it ranks just behind Morocco, China, Algeria and Italy. “The number of Senegalese students living in France has increased by 62% in five years,” said the French ambassador in Dakar, during a Team Europe press conference organized on Wednesday at the headquarters of the EU in Dakar. She spoke on the unfortunate subject of Schengen visa issuance in Senegal: “at least 62% of short-stay Schengen visa applications received by the French consular services in Senegal are granted. The acceptance rate for short stays is greater than 62%,” specifies Ms. Christine Fages.
According to her, the Consulate General of France in Dakar received “around 43,000 visa requests in 2022 and around 46,000 in 2023”. “Two thirds of these requests, she underlines, concern short-stay Schengen visas, the rest being made up of long-stay visas,” he adds. Regarding the processing time for short-stay Schengen visas, the French ambassador to Senegal indicates that it is two to three weeks. The Ambassador of Belgium to Senegal, Hélène De Bock, declares that around 30,000 new residence permits have been issued to Senegalese nationals in 2022. “This is more than the number of residence permits issued to Senegalese over the previous three years,” she said.
Appointment hassles
Today, Team Europe is taking steps to put an end to the hassle associated with visa applications. The Belgian ambassador to Senegal informs that efforts are being made to put an end to “intermediation” in the application process.
“And we are undertaking a whole series of measures to try to counter, precisely regarding the costs linked to the visa application, the intervention of intermediary players, of pharmacies. So I am taking advantage of my speech to really emphasize the fact that we are put in difficulty by the intervention of types of third party actors, these are actors with whom we have no relationship, but who submit files which monopolize and capture appointments for completely regular requests and therefore in fact take the place of completely justified ordinary requesters who ask for… (She does not continue). It’s a cynical business against which we are taking a series of measures,” she says. A subject on which they say they are in contact with the Senegalese authorities. “These are questions that put us under a lot of pressure, in any case put our services under a lot of pressure, and we are aware of it. And we are very aware of the difficulties that exist in obtaining an appointment,” she argues.
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