From Cape To Cairo
When two Africans—one from the south, the other from the north—set out to cross the continent, they raised the question: how easy is it for an African to move in their own land?
Photo by Sweder Breet on Unsplash
On a warm April afternoon in 2024, Keith Boyd, 57, strolled through Cairo’s Zamalek district with the South African and Egyptian flags knotted across his shoulders. The late sun cast a dull gold sheen over the Nile as curious onlookers and journalists gathered beneath the iconic Cairo Tower and raised their phones and cameras to capture the moment. Boyd had spent the past 270 days walking more than 10,000 kilometers—starting in Cape Town and crossing South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, most of Ethiopia, Sudan, and finally Egypt.
He was on the verge of completing the fastest Cape-to-Cairo journey on foot. However, a 500-kilometer gap in northern Ethiopia, which he skipped due to the ongoing conflict in the Amhara region (Northern Ethiopia), still stood between him and the official world record.
That same afternoon, nearly 4,000 kilometres to the south, Khadija Mansour crunched across the icy ridge near Mount Kilimanjaro’s summit. The 29-year-old Egyptian vlogger laughed into her camera; her breath was visible in the thin wind. Reaching Africa’s highest point marked the midpoint of her hitchhiking journey from Cairo to Cape Town. Both adventurers began their journeys in 2023, each driven by different motivations. Boyd, who grew up under apartheid in South Africa, believes that misunderstanding and discrimination thrive when people are kept apart.
“When I was nine years old, I was told that Black people can’t see colors,” he recalled. “And because we were separated—even in schools—I didn’t have Black friends I could ask if that was actually true.” Now a socioeconomic activist, Boyd argues that such divisions still persist today. Some are physical, like the national borders that cut across the continent. Others are structural—poverty, inequality—that also “restrict the movement of people.” “For me, the Cape-to-Cairo trip was a tangible way to highlight both the shared struggles and the deep connections among African people,” he said. “And to tell that story through a book and a documentary.” Boyd also founded a nonprofit organization, Rainbow Leaders, which aims to tackle poverty in Africa by encouraging youth participation in elections. His Cape-to-Cairo trip, he said, was a way to bring that vision to life. “If I could take this old body and break a 26-year-old world record for the toughest footrace on the planet,” he said, “then surely you can vote.”
For Mansour, the idea for the journey first took root in 2021 during a trip to Ethiopia—her first time traveling further south on the continent. “A friend was heading to Addis Ababa and asked if I wanted to come along. Luckily, I said yes,” she recalled. Getting a visa back then was easy. “Probably because tensions between Cairo and Addis weren’t high at the time,” she added. They planned to stay for a month, but Mansour ended up extending her trip. “Once I arrived, I didn’t want to leave. I loved the country, the people, the culture.” She hitchhiked from Addis to the Ogaden region in the southeast and back. The experience, she said, brought to life the anthropology diploma she had earned just before the COVID-19 pandemic at the Institute of African Research and Studies, Cairo University. “Ethiopia taught me more than any classroom ever could.” Back in Cairo, she began thinking about hitchhiking from Cairo to Mount Kilimanjaro. But the more she reflected, the more she felt drawn to something bigger—the full length of the historical Cairo–to–Cape Town route.
A complex legacy
For more than 150 years, the idea of a route connecting Cape Town to Cairo has fascinated imperialists, explorers, Pan-Africanists, and dreamers alike. The first formal proposal came in 1874 from English journalist Edwin Arnold, who imagined a corridor of railways and river transport linking the continent. Much of Africa’s interior was unmapped at the time, and European colonial control had not yet penetrated far beyond the coasts. Arnold also cosponsored the expedition of H. M. Stanley to trace the source of the Nile and chart the Congo River—an effort that would later help lay the groundwork for King Leopold’s brutal colonization of the Congo.
However, the idea only gained real momentum with arch-imperialist Cecil John Rhodes, who played a central role in securing large parts of southern Africa for the British Empire. Rhodes envisioned a railway and telegraph line stretching from Cape Town to Cairo—imperial arteries for what he believed to be the natural domination of the “superior” Anglo-Saxon race. In the preface to Ewart Grogan’s book From the Cape to Cairo, which recounts one of the earliest documented overland journeys across the continent, Rhodes laid bare his economic ambitions:
Everyone supposes that the railway is being built with the only object that a human being may be able to get in at Cairo and get out at Cape Town. This is, of course, ridiculous. The object is to cut Africa through the centre, and the railway will pick up trade all along the route.
Though Rhodes managed to push rail lines northward from southern Africa and southward from Egypt, his grand vision of a continuous British-controlled route was never realized. He died of heart failure in 1902, and his body was carried by train to what was then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where he was buried. In the following decade, many European travelers retraced Grogan’s path, assisted by the administrative privileges their colonial status afforded. For Africans, however, movement across these same lands was tightly restricted. The new colonial borders, along with “native pass laws,” severely limited the mobility of the indigenous population within their territories.
As independence movements swept the continent in the mid-20th century, African leaders faced a difficult choice. Meeting in Cairo in 1964, the newly formed Organisation of African Unity (OAU) opted to maintain colonial borders to avoid the territorial disputes and conflicts that redrawing them might provoke.
But the dream of a transcontinental Cape to Cairo route didn’t disappear. In the 1970s, the OAU and the UN Economic Commission for Africa revived the Cape-to-Cairo concept, proposing a new highway following the old colonial blueprint, with hopes of connecting Africans, not dividing them. Yet the route remains incomplete. And in a bitter twist, it is often still easier for a European to travel along it than for many Africans.
Africans also do not enjoy the same degree of freedom of movement within their continent. For Khadija Mansour, most of the borders between Cairo and Cape Town were closed without a visa—her route was almost entirely “red.” “I spent weeks just trying to sort out visas,” she said. “Researching requirements, booking embassy appointments—it took a lot of time before I could even start.” There were a few exceptions. Sudan, for instance, didn’t require a visa, but only for Egyptian women, a rare exemption she could use. For Ethiopia, the second country on her route, she could apply for an online visa. Other embassies offered a workaround: “They told me, if you can show a flight ticket or proof you’ve already begun the trip, they could give a visa valid for a longer period,” she explained. “But I was hitchhiking,” Khadija said. “I didn’t have flight bookings or a fixed schedule. I couldn’t guarantee when I’d reach each country. So I just started the trip and planned to apply for the rest of the visas on the road.” Egypt ranks near the bottom of the Africa Visa Openness Index. Most African nationals need a visa to enter the country, and Egyptians face similar restrictions when traveling across the continent.
Keith Boyd’s experience was different. Heading north from Cape Town, he encountered few barriers—at least until Kenya. “The first stretch was smooth,” he said. “Not as easy as moving across Europe, but still, South Africa to Kenya, I didn’t need a single visa in advance.” This uneven access is rooted in the 1991 Abuja Treaty, which laid the groundwork for Africa’s regional integration. It tasked regional blocs with easing movement within their regions first, leaving cross-regional mobility for later stages. Some, like the Southern African Development Community (SADC), have made considerable progress. South African passport holders like Boyd benefit from relatively open travel across much of Southern Africa.
In contrast, North Africa has lagged. Regional cooperation remains weak, and blocs like the Arab Maghreb Union are largely inactive. For Egyptians like Mansour, moving west across neighboring countries is difficult, while heading south means navigating fragmented and poorly coordinated visa regimes. In 2018, the African Union introduced the Protocol on Free Movement of Persons to bridge these gaps. But with few countries—especially along the Cape-to-Cairo route—willing to ratify it, the protocol remains little more than a promise on paper.
A detour in the route
By January 2023, Mansour had begun her journey, reaching Abu Simbel in southern Egypt by mid-month. She wandered through a magnificent UNESCO World Heritage Site, a rock-hewn temple complex built by Pharaoh Ramesses II in the 13th century BCE. From there, she boarded a ferry across Lake Nasser, the vast artificial lake created after President Gamal Abdel Nasser built the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s to control the Nile’s flow. The same Nile corridor had once carried Ramesses II and earlier pharaohs south into Nubia, for both conquest and trade. Today, Egypt is leading a modern initiative—the VICMED project—to establish a continuous navigation route from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean. Backed by the African Development Bank, the plan envisions seamless river transport along the Nile. But for now, it remains largely ink on paper.
After disembarking from the ferry, Mansour stood by the roadside, hoping to catch a ride for the final stretch to the border crossing at Wadi Halfa. On the Egyptian side, border officers pulled her aside for a brief interrogation. “When you’re hitchhiking, people have questions,” she said. ‘Why are you crossing by land if you’re just visiting? Why not fly if you’re a tourist?’ They were clearly suspicious… It became clear that even when your paperwork is in order, crossing borders isn’t easy.” Because the Egypt–Sudan crossing operates on limited hours, Mansour spent the night at a nearby mosque, waiting for the post to reopen. The next morning—March 6—she was finally allowed to enter Sudan. On the Sudanese side, she faced no issues.
Mansour spent the next month exploring Northern Sudan, tracing the ruins of the ancient Kushite Kingdom—temples, pyramids, and forgotten stone carvings scattered across the desert. By April 13, she finally reached the capital, Khartoum. “I met up with friends who were also traveling across the continent on different routes,” she said. “It was Ramadan, and we were planning how to spend the Eid with our Sudanese friends.” But on the morning of April 15, her trip and personal safety were thrown into uncertainty. Civil war had erupted in Khartoum between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). “I was staying with a Sudanese family,” she recalled. “I woke up to the sound of the TV blaring. Everyone was watching the news, anxious. It felt like Egypt during the 2011 revolution—everyone glued to the screen, trying to understand what was happening.”
In the days that followed, the situation in Khartoum rapidly deteriorated. Electricity was cut, and internet access became limited. Mansour stayed indoors with her host family, not leaving the house for over a week. “After about two weeks, I finally ventured out to meet my friends,” she said. “What I saw was far worse than what we’d seen on TV—checkpoints, smoke, empty streets. It felt like the city was collapsing.” Many of her fellow travelers had made up their minds: It was time to evacuate. “But me and one other friend decided to keep going toward Ethiopia,” she said. “I came this far, and I am not ready to give up yet.” But as she made her way southeast to Wad Madani, following the Blue Nile en route to Ethiopia, Mansour still hadn’t received the Ethiopian visa she had applied for. She knew it would be a gamble.
Before reaching the Gallabat–Metema border crossing between Sudan and Ethiopia, Mansour contacted the Egyptian embassy in Addis Ababa, which issued her a security clearance to help facilitate her entry into Ethiopia. At the Sudanese side of the border, the officers were cooperative, but still cautious. “One of them told me, ‘They won’t let you in without a visa—and if that happens, we probably can’t bring you back here. You’ll be stuck between borders,’” she said. She vividly remembers the scene at the border: “Large banners from the UN and international migration agencies, and hundreds of Eritreans, Sudanese, and Syrians—who had already fled the war in their country, only to be displaced again by Sudan’s conflict. And then there was me,” she said, “ a girl trying to hitchhike across the continent. It was clear that many others had far greater reasons to cross than I did.” Mansour wasn’t allowed to enter Ethiopia. She was stuck at the border post for nearly ten days, waiting in limbo. It wasn’t until late May that coordination between the Egyptian embassy in Addis Ababa and the Ethiopian government finally cleared her passage. Once inside, she resumed her journey. Over the next two months, she hitchhiked across Ethiopia, eventually climbing Ras Dashen, the highest peak in the country.
While Mansour pushed deeper into East Africa, Keith Boyd was preparing to begin his own journey. His original plan was to travel southbound—from Cairo to Cape Town—but the war in Sudan forced a change. Instead, he decided to start at home, in South Africa, and head north. “In addition to contacting embassies, we had to pack all the necessary equipment for the trip— camping gear, fridges for medicines, security clearances for the support vehicles, and emergency lights visible from afar,” he said.
The start of the journey was smooth. Boyd covered around 50 kilometers on foot each day, steadily moving north. After two months, he paused to leap off the Victoria Falls Bridge, which straddles the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia. The bridge is a relic of Rhodes’ Cape-to-Cairo railway scheme. Rhodes, who never actually visited the Falls, is said to have instructed engineers to “build the bridge across the Zambezi where the trains, as they pass, will catch the spray of the Falls.”
“We only spent three to four hours at each border crossing—up until Ethiopia,” Boyd said. “Most of that time was just for vehicle checks.” As an entrepreneur, Boyd knows firsthand that moving goods and vehicles across African borders is often much harder than moving people. “A few years ago, we had a fleet of vehicles in Zambia and we needed to move them across the border into Lubumbashi in the DRC,” he said. “But they wouldn’t let the vehicles through without providing any reasons.” Harmonizing customs regulations and border procedures to ease the movement of goods and vehicles is one of the core objectives of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)—a flagship initiative of the African Union.
The AfCFTA, which entered into force in 2019, is one of the largest free-trade areas in the world by number of participating countries. It aims to boost intra-African trade by reducing tariffs and non-tariff barriers. All countries along the Cape-to-Cairo corridor have ratified the agreement, except for Sudan. In contrast, ratification of the Free Movement of Persons (FMP) Protocol has been sluggish—almost none of the countries along the Cape-to-Cairo route have ratified it. Experts argue that without free movement, the AfCFTA’s full potential can’t be realized. The protocol is crucial for creating a continent-wide labor market and addressing persistent skill mismatches across regions. Maureen Achieng, the permanent representative of IGAD to the African Union, says the AfCFTA and the Free Movement Protocol are “two wheels of the same vehicle. If one of those wheels doesn’t move properly, the vehicle won’t run smoothly.”
At the Kenya–Ethiopia border, Boyd hit a major snag—his support vehicles weren’t allowed to cross. “For a vehicle to move across borders, it needs a kind of passport called a carnet de passage,” he explained. “In the six countries we’d passed so far, our carnet was accepted—except in Ethiopia.” Ethiopian authorities offered him two options: either lodge a $20,000 deposit for the two vehicles or hire a local company to guarantee that the vehicles would leave the country on time. “We went with the second option,” Boyd said. “But it was so expensive that we eventually decided to complete the rest of the trip with one vehicle.”
Finalizing the paperwork to bring the support vehicles into Ethiopia was taking too long, so Boyd decided to keep running, hoping the vehicles would catch up in a few days.
“It was really inconvenient,” he said. “Most of what I needed—my running shoes, protein, basic food, medical supplies—was in those vehicles. I had to pack everything I could into one large bag and just keep going.” He added, “Once you cross the equator, it feels like hitting an invisible line. You’re still in Africa, but it becomes far more challenging and restrictive.”
Meanwhile, on Mansour’s side, things were finally starting to ease. Worried her Ethiopian visa would expire before reaching Kenya, she applied for a Djibouti visa instead. “And magically, I got it in one day,” she said. Mansour took a train across the border into Djibouti, then applied for a Somaliland visa from there—which she also received quickly. But things got complicated again for Mansour when she tried to rejoin her route toward Kenya by crossing into Somalia. “We were detained for two weeks after entering Somalia,” she said. “Authorities were investigating and verifying our identities.” Eventually, Mansour was released—but her plans were disrupted once more. She wasn’t allowed to continue overland into Kenya. “They told me, ‘We can’t guarantee your safety.’ So for the first time on my trip, I had to take a plane.” In Kenya, she headed northeast of Nairobi to climb Mount Kenya—the second-highest peak on the continent.
Meanwhile, Boyd’s support vehicle finally caught up with him a week later. But the relief was short-lived. After crossing the Blue Nile Bridge into Ethiopia’s Amhara region, Boyd was kidnapped and robbed. He managed to escape and contact the South African embassy in Addis Ababa, which then coordinated with the federal government to dispatch a military escort for the final 600-kilometer stretch to the Sudanese border. “But after just 100 kilometers, the colonel leading the escort told us it was too dangerous to continue,” Boyd said. “By that point, our Sudanese visas were close to expiring, so we decided to fly near the border, finish the Sudan and Egypt segments of the trip, and then return later to complete the final 500-kilometer stretch.”
Security concerns remain a major reason many African countries hesitate to ratify the Free Movement Protocol. Today, the continent is home to more than 100 border disputes and at least 58 potential secessionist regions across 29 countries. Still, the protocol accounts for such concerns, allowing member states to maintain their own national regulations and border procedures. To further address these issues, the African Union is working with Interpol to develop an ICT-based movement-control system and information-sharing interface. Additionally, the AU has established AFRIPOL—a continental police-coordination body launched in 2015 to strengthen cooperation between law enforcement agencies.
Crossing the Sahara
Boyd crossed into Sudan without issues and kept moving eastward to avoid the main conflict zones. “The war in Sudan is more conventional—there’s a clear red zone and blue zone. As long as you stay in one and avoid the front lines, you’re probably okay,” he said. To steer clear of clashes near Khartoum, he zigzagged across the country, eventually reaching the Argeen border crossing with Egypt. “The temperature in the Nubian Desert hit 48°C. I had to drink about 1.5 liters of water every hour to avoid heatstroke.”
While the Sudanese side let him through without incident, the Egyptian authorities were more skeptical “They couldn’t understand why someone would enter the country on foot. We were held from 9 p.m. until morning, with officers waking us up throughout the night for more questions,” Boyd said. “By sunrise, they finally let us in.” From there, he followed the Nile northward, reaching Cairo in mid-April 2024. In Cairo, Boyd began preparing to return to Ethiopia to complete the final 500-kilometer stretch of his journey, which was crucial for securing the Guinness World Record for the fastest Cape-to-Cairo trek on foot. “We did everything we could—contacted embassies, the Ethiopian government, even the African Union—asking for safe passage,” he said. After nearly a month of coordination and waiting, Boyd returned to Ethiopia. With the help of locals, whom he described as “heroes,” he managed to cover the last stretch. “Without them, it wouldn’t have been possible,” he added. In late July 2024, the Guinness World Records officially confirmed that Boyd had set the fastest time for walking from Cape Town to Cairo, beating the previous record by 17 days.
Meanwhile, Mansour took another detour, crossing into Uganda to climb Mount Stanley—the third-highest peak in Africa. Boyd is now working on a book and documentary chronicling his journey, likely to be the first by an African traveler along this historic route. “I don’t have one fixed idea of borders,” Boyd said. “They can divide, but they can also unite. What matters is making sure they do the latter.” He adds that he’s no idealist: “A borderless Africa is a big dream—and it’ll take many building blocks. But if young people keep laying them down, we’ll get there.”
A recent survey across 36 African countries showed that most people support freedom of movement. And there are signs of progress: Countries like Rwanda, Ghana, Benin, the Gambia, and Seychelles have lifted visa requirements for all African passport holders. “I’ve met so many fearless African travelers along the way,” Mansour said. “For me, a truly borderless Africa would open the door to more stories, deeper connections, and endless roads to hitch and peaks to climb.”
