Capago, a New Service For Processing Schengen Visas in Algeria

Capago will be the new service provider for processing the French visa applications, starting in 2025, most likely beginning in April, replacing the current service providers in Algiers, VFS Global, and Oran and Annaba through TLS Contact.

The new French visa application service, Capago, states on its official website that it has been the exclusive representative for processing Schengen visa applications for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in South Africa since 2010, Kuwait since 2012, Azerbaijan since 2017, Benin, Togo, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Mali since 2018, Sierra Leone in 2021, and Algeria as from 2025.

On the same website, the new French visa application service indicates that it is currently recruiting in anticipation of opening its offices in Algeria, where the number of available positions is presently 6, distributed between Algiers (3 positions) related to the suppliers’ accountant, general accountant and customer accountant, and Constantine (2 positions), namely the operations manager and assistant receptionist, while the sixth position is a remote job and is related to communication and marketing.

The website also indicates that the headquarters of the new French visa application service in Algiers is located in the municipality of El Biar on Omar Bouneghaz Street, stressing that the electronic data entry system ensures that all visa applications are sent to the consulates within 24 hours.

The website explains that the service can carry out pre-verification and pre-optimization procedures for group requests, in addition to additional services in its offices such as passport photos, photocopying and communication, in addition to delivering passports by express mail, with the possibility of tracking requests via Internet and SMS, and personal face-to-face human communication with each applicant, in addition to a phone call and direct conversation.

With the entry of this new company, the French Embassy in Algeria has broken its ties with both “TLS Contact”, which has been providing services in Annaba and Oran for more than 10 years, and “VFS Global” in Algiers since April 2018.

As is known, “VFS Global” is also a visa application service for several European embassies such as Italy, Turkey and China, and it is expected to continue providing its services, according to what “Echorouk” learned from sources related to the file, given that the contract that links it to France does not include the rest of the countries.

A few days ago, parliamentary questions in the French National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, revealed the amount of money earned by French consulates in Algeria, in exchange for rejected visa files, estimated at 13 million euros out of the total expenditures of the Africans who received rejection of visas amounting to 56 million euros manually.

According to the French MP’s question, during 2023, African nationals received 704,000 negative responses to their French visa applications, representing 41.3% of the number of applications rejected by French consulates around the world, stressing that the financial costs of these applications for applicants in African countries are expected to worsen further, given that the cost of short-stay visas has increased by 12.5% since June 11, 2024.