Ghana is the country of origin for 42,124 visa applicants to Schengen countries in 2022, becoming one of the African countries with most applications for the year.
However, the approval rate for Ghanaian applicants has not been entirely positive as less than half of the requests (43.6 percent) were denied, resulting in 18,363 rejected applications, VisaGuide.World reports.
The destination country for visa applications from Ghana in 2022 has been the Netherlands, as this EU country received 9,603 visa applications – the highest number of requests filed by Ghanaians to any bloc’s consulate. Dutch authorities declined about 51 percent of all applications filed by this nationality group, resulting in 4,896 denied visas and 4,497 approved applications.
The second country that received the highest number of applications after the Netherlands was Germany, where Ghanaian applicants filed 8,150 requests for visas. Unlike the Netherlands, Germany rejected fewer applications – only a quarter of visa applications filed by Ghanaians were rejected, accounting for 1,972 denied applications. On the other hand, 6,147 visas were issued by German authorities to applicants from Ghana.
Spain and France also had higher application rates compared to other countries – 6,081 visa applications were filed to Spanish consulates by Ghanaians in 2022, in addition to another 4,956 applications submitted to France representatives.
However, rejection rates between these countries differed significantly, as France rejected only 30.2 percent of applications, accounting for 1,495 requests, compared to Spain which rejected 46 percent of requests. This means that almost half of applications filed by Ghanaians to Spain, which account for 2,797 requests, were denied.
Rejection Rates Higher Among Countries With Fewer Applicants
Data show that rejection rates for Ghanaian applicants were higher among countries that received fewer applications. More specifically, Germany and France are two of the countries with the highest application rates, especially compared to countries like Malta and Czechia, which received 306 and 454 applications.
Regardless, Malta had the highest rejection rate for Ghanaian applicants for 2022, with 69.9 per cent of requests being rejected, meaning that only 114 visa applications from Ghana were approved by Maltese authorities.
Norway also had a high rejection rate for Ghanaians as 1,162 out of 3,806 applications were approved and another 2,637 were denied, accounting for a rejection rate of 69.3 percent.
Swiss authorities also denied some 1,895 applications, resulting in a rejection rate of 46.5 percent. This indicates that 2,182 out of 4,077 visa applications filed by this nationality group in 2022 received a positive response.