Visa no. 1: Ghana

Visas suck. West Africa is full of visas. Most of the time you won’t know where to get a visa for each country, how much it will cost, how long will it take to get one. It’s even worse when you live in an unimportant country, like Poland, where of all West Africa there is only Nigerian embassy. And Nigeria doesn’t do tourist visas, you’re either visiting someone (invitation required) or going for business (invitation required)… What you’re left with for information is obviously internet and even then there is little information and one needs to search, most likely ending up on Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree or perhaps Routard forum (if you can read French) and a few precious travel blogs.

I met once a French lady, who spends a month every year in West Africa. When we found about each other, that is that we go to Africa a lot, the first thing she said “oh but there is one visa that is horrible to get”.

You’ll soon learn is that the worst visa to obtain is a visa for the most touristy country in the region: Ghana.

While you can pick up probably most of the other West African visas on your way moving from country to country (Togo, Burkina Faso and Mauritania are apparently even giving out visas on the land borders), Ghana only gives our visas in your country of residence. I’ve been refused Ghana visa before: asking in Zimbabwe, Nigeria and UK and I was always given this reason: my country is handled by the embassy in Berlin so I should apply there.

Apparently this policy came into force in 2011. I used to get Ghana visa on arrival for USD100 but the company I used to work with at one point refuses to give me proper paperwork for that. It is still possible to do it though but some immigration authorisation from Ghana is required. There has even been a petition started for the Ghana authorities to start giving out visas on arrival without any pre-conditions. I assume what we (EU) do to them, they do to us…

There has been, or according to Polish Foreign Ministry and even Google Maps, Ghana Consulate in Warsaw but no-one ever picks up a phone there.

Single-entry Ghana visa in Berlin costs EUR110 and takes more than 2 weeks to be issued. If you’re in hurry, EUR160 gets you visa in 3 days. Officially, if you’re not in express mode, the visa takes 10 days to be issued but… I got an email today that visa has been approved (on the same they registered my visa papers, yay! only a day after the courier finally delivered my visa pack) and it will be ready for collection on 11 February, 13 days from now… And it took 6 days (officially they deliver to Germany in 2 days) for the DPD courier service to deliver my passport to the embassy… I could possibly use DHL to send in the papers and they should be in he embassy on he next day but it’s EUR50 and DPD costs EUR13 and there are many more visas ahead.

I wrote an email to the embassy asking them to allow me to collect the passport (not yet sure how I’ll do it, probably in person) 4 days earlier than scheduled. Fingers crossed.