City bosses across Africa want national governments to ban visa requirements and allow people to move freely between the various countries. Jean-Pierre Elong Mbassi, secretary-general of the United Cities and Local Governments of Africa, said the time for keeping colonial borders had lapsed.Speaking in Sandton yesterday, Mbassi said Africa had to facilitate the movement of people to realise development and intracontinental trade it so desperately needed."People at local level want free movement ... We beg our national governments to consider bringing African people together."West Africa has done this. We do not see any problems there. People can move from Lagos to Dakar without a visa. What's so difficult for our continent to get rid of these borders we inherited from colonial masters?" Mbassi asked.In May Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta made the same call to the Pan African Parliament, urging the SADC to start freeing up the movement of people and goods between member states to increase trade. Only 12% of Africa's trade is between countries.In June African leaders signed a historic 26-nation free trade pact to create a common market spanning half the continent.These countries have a combined GDP of more than $1-trillion.According to the Department of Trade and Industry, trade between South Africa and Europe is still high (at R497-billion) compared to the rest of Africa (at R441-billion).But Nedbank economist Isaac Matshego said visa requirements were used by countries to deal with security matters and not necessarily to address economic issues.Matshego said though removing visa requirements could ease trade between countries, it was not enough to deal with economic constraints facing the continent."Many African countries are low- to middle-income economies.They are at the same level of income."When you want to trade in high-value goods, you have to trade with people who can afford them."Also, many of the African countries produce the same level of goods, particularly commodities. You are not going to get those countries trading among themselves."What we need is a level of industrialisation and specialisation for countries to exchange for what they do not produce. African states also have to deal with improvement of ports, airports, rail systems ... These need to be expanded to handle higher volumes of goods," Matshego said.Johannesburg mayor Parks Tau welcomed the idea of free movement and said the first step would be to strengthen the customs union in Southern Africa and then build links between cities and countries using regional entities."We must also look at the fact that sometimes these borders are artificial, like the border between Zeerust and Botswana. These communities are part of each other. These people meet on a daily basis. It is a question of how do you [make] this movement of people in our region [legal] and ensure there is easier access in the continent and, therefore, an easier environment for people to trade," he said...