Digital Nomads (Wrapped): Visas, skills, and the price of mobility in 2025

In 2025, we published 37 editions of the Digital Nomads column. We spoke to diasporan African professionals across tech, finance, law, privacy, venture capital, and a growing class of location-independent workers who move frequently.

The internet often describes the world as a ‘global village.’ In practice, borders are less fluid, limiting movement for many in the Global South. Job applications still filter by geography. At embassies, in job interviews, Africans still need to make a painstaking case for why they deserve access and opportunities to build a life away from home.

If 2025 taught us anything, it’s not that the system has become fairer, but that Africa’s workforce have become more deliberate. Mobility requires planning, capital, loads of paperwork, and trade-offs. The location-independent lifestyle rarely happens by chance, especially for average earners.

If you’re thinking about global mobility in 2026, here are a few rules and lessons to keep in mind as you plan:

Rule 1: Nobody just travels

Movement begins long before the airport. It starts with sorting visa hassles, flight routing, and housing math. It involves choosing where to be based not on aesthetics, but on access.

Many African founders we spoke to moved abroad with a clear purpose. In our reporting on first-time African founders going global, two founders relocated to cities where investors, accelerators, and partners were concentrated, while keeping teams and markets rooted on the continent. In that instance, travel became directional, not exploratory.

Amaka Amaku’s experience shows how intentional this can be. By securing a Benin passport, the Nigerian travel content creator unlocked visa-free movement across several French-speaking countries in West Africa and parts of Europe. That single document changed how easily she could move, who she could meet, and which opportunities were worth pursuing. Mobility was no longer constrained by Nigerian passport limitations. It became a tool she could deploy.

Other nomads structured their lives around hubs. One digital nomad we reported on used Dubai as a base to explore other regions in Southeast Asia. The city’s residency options, flight connectivity, and tax structure made it a practical launchpad for frequent work and pleasure trips, he told us in September. In 2025, travel still requires budgeting and planning, but having a stable base reduces friction.

Rule 2: Visas are career infrastructure

The most ambitious professionals we encountered plan visas the way others plan promotions. Skilled worker permits. Digital nomad visas. Investor pathways. Each option comes with constraints that quietly shape careers.

Skilled worker visas across several countries open a clear path to residency abroad, but some of them can also be distressing. Our reporting captured this through the experience of a tech worker who relocated to the UK from Rwanda after securing a role at a global tech company. When he was laid off in early 2025, his job loss immediately became an immigration emergency. His visa was tied to his employer. Without a new sponsor, he had 60 days to leave the UK.

After weeks of interview runs and crippling uncertainty, he eventually secured a job and another sponsor. 

Several other visa types also opened access to career upgrades. The most common one we saw was the student visa. Several African nomads, including Mark Irozuru (a UK-based DevOps engineer), Motunrayo Adebayo (a US-based tech privacy analyst), Oghenerukevwe Odjugo (an Australia-based equity analyst), and Jephte Ioudom Foubi (a tech consulting business owner in Portugal), all of whom we spoke to, relied on these visa types to access global markets. These visas became launchpads for their global careers.

Digital nomad visas also became more sought-after, especially in countries like South Africa. In countries rolling out these visas and adjacent entrepreneurship programmes, location-independent workers could live legally without employer sponsorship, provided they meet income thresholds. It unlocked Western influx into countries like South Africa and opened access to East African countries, such as Kenya and Rwanda, attracting tech workers from other countries on the continent.

Investor mobility routes served yet another purpose. Founders and investors tapped business-grade visas to access global markets like the US. 

Rule 3: Remote work did not erase inequality

Global hiring specialists told us plainly that location still plays a major role in how Africa-based remote workers are paid and levelled. Remote roles may be global, but compensation bands often remain regional. Africans working remotely from the continent frequently earn less than peers doing identical work elsewhere, though a few still break through the ceiling.

Migration does not automatically fix this. Several recruiters noted that it is common for African professionals relocating abroad to accept lower titles or pay cuts to re-enter competitive markets. For example, a senior developer taking mid-level roles, or a DevOps specialist stepping back, because their experience does not yet include large-scale AI infrastructure or hyperscale cloud systems common in Western firms.

African tech professionals who break through these ceilings, either working remotely from Africa or migrating abroad, do so by stacking scarce skills, building visible track records, or positioning themselves in roles where credibility outweighs location. Others combine migration with targeted upskilling, accepting short-term regressions to unlock longer-term mobility. The ceiling exists, but it is not absolute.

Rule 4: Less-crowded paths unlock new careers

Everyone doesn’t compete in the same lane.

As global tech roles became saturated, some professionals deliberately moved sideways into emerging or underserved fields. Tech privacy is one such path. Evolving regulatory complexity, compliance demands, and jurisdictional nuance created a space for specialists who could operate across borders.

Motunrayo Adebayo’s career illustrates this shift. Her move into tech privacy was not about escaping inequality or competing harder. It was about choosing a lane where demand outpaced supply. As privacy regulations tightened globally, her expertise became portable. The work travelled easily across jurisdictions, and her career expanded with it.

In 2025, two global recruiters told us that niche roles in demand are great relocation opportunities for skilled African professionals willing to specialise, particularly in markets like site reliability engineering (SRE), cloud and AI systems, and other unique roles in growing sectors, like pet-tech.

Rule 5: Africa remains the market

Leaving home does not mean disengaging.

Founders building for African markets quickly learned that distance creates blind spots. Cultural nuance, regulatory interpretation, and user behaviour cannot be fully abstracted. Successful operators built structures to stay close. 

Oluwaleke Fakorede’s approach with GoWagr, a startup that allows users to predict real-life outcomes and earn money, made this explicit. Fakorede moved to the US on the H-1B visa before transferring to the O-1, setting him on a path to permanent residency. Yet while operating from the US, leadership remained split across geographies. Decision-making stayed anchored in Nigeria through his co-founders, who understood local behaviour, payments, and regulatory ambiguity.

The goal was not to return permanently, but to remain informed continuously.

Milton Tutu, whose marketing career led him to settle in three African countries within five years, emphasises this. Tutu set up the groundwork for Selar’s expansion into Kenya in 2024 and relocated to the country in the same year. He says, “There is nothing as good or better than being present in the markets that you want to expand to.”

You can change countries as a nomadic African founder, but you cannot outsource context. The same is true when investing in Africa, especially as a foreign investor coming to the market. Global mobility plays a huge role in how these firms invest, and several investors who spoke to us said they only commit capital after spending significant time on the ground, building local relationships, and understanding regulatory nuances that cannot be learned from pitch decks or short visits.

For them, mobility is not about flying in and out. It is about being present long enough to see how deals actually work, who makes decisions informally, and where risks and opportunities really sit in Africa’s tech ecosystem.

Rule 6: The goal is choice

Across these stories, one pattern held. Global mobility is about control and stacking up choices for longterm careers, lifestyle, and access.

Some people moved to access opportunities. Others moved so they could decide when not to. Digital nomad visas, investor routes, second passports, and hybrid careers expanded the menu of options, but none removed the need for planning.

Adebayo Aderohunmu’s journey reflected this clearly. His mobility was slow, intentional, and designed around sustainability rather than speed. Travel supported his work. It did not replace it.

Mobility today is not an identity. It is a hedge. A way to reduce dependence on a single labour market, passport, or system.

For Africans building global careers now, the work is not about being everywhere. It is about being able to choose where to be and when.

We would love to hear what you think about this edition of Digital Nomads and stories you’d love to see us explore. Share your thoughts and ideas with us here.