“Traveling overland in West Africa requires great patience, Kim, and a lot of visas.”
Check it out, Sis, I wrote a book about how to get your visa for every country in West Africa. It’s a real page-turner.
OK, it’s not a page-turner. But my visa guide will save hours and hours of web searching and minimize the hassle of getting updated information about West African visas.
Yes, West Africa is the world’s least visited region and it’s best known for disease, poverty, and war. But I reckon I’ll get a jump on the competition.
“I wrote a visa guide for someplace nobody goes. Brilliant, right?”
Well, the truth is adventurous explorers do travel to West Africa because it’s off the beaten track.
Way off!
But that means there’s very little tourist infrastructure—outside of Morocco, Gambia, and Ghana—and mining for gold is easier than finding West Africa visa information.
Back in 2017—when we spent five months overlanding from Morocco to Benin—there was scarcely any online information about visas, budget accommodations, and cheap transportation in West Africa.
And now in 2020 it’s still hard to find updated visa information!
“Why doesn’t someone put all the updated West Africa visa information in one place?”
Voilà!
This visa guide is everyone’s cheat-sheet for West African visas. But travelers can do all the research themselves, of course.
“Here are my favorite tools to mine for West African tourist visa gold.”
The best source for visa information is your destination country’s immigration office or tourism board. But very few West African governments have sophisticated websites highlighting their nascent or nonexistent tourism industries.
Visit Your Government’s International Travel Website
US citizens can visit the US State Department’s International Travel section for the Country Information page and enter your destination country in the search engine, then scroll down to the “Entry, Exit, and Visa Requirements.”
Even though I’m a bloody Yank, I cross-check the UK Government’s Foreign Travel Advice and the Australian Government’s Smartraveller page to confirm visa on arrival details or look for helpful links to eVisa portals or embassies.
Search The Airline Industry
When you’re checking into a flight the airline staff uses this IATA Travel Centre database to confirm if you need a visa. The IATA is basically an airline cartel that fixes prices and squashes competition, but on the bright side, their website is the go-to source for visa requirements.
IATA’s partner Visa Central is an excellent resource; use their online search to learn current visa requirements for specific countries based on your passport (the search engine is geared toward US citizens, so just enter any “state of residence”).
Travelers can also confirm the visa requirements for their destination by using their airline’s search tools such as Kenya Airways’ Visa and Health Information and SkyTeam’s TravelDoc website.
Check Your Wikis
Search Wikipedia for “visa requirements for (your country) citizens” for your home country’s visa requirements for all countries, and search “visa policy of (destination country)” for your destination country’s visa requirements. Make sure you check the reference notes at the bottom for helpful links.
Both Wikitravel and Wikivoyage are great sources for travel planning but the visa information can be outdated and duplicated on both websites. And yet another Wiki website, WikiOverland, is for travelers driving their own vehicle but includes visa information.
Take Advantage Of Visa Services’ Free Search Tools
Most Google searches for visa information result in myriad visa service companies that are worthless unless you pay for their service, but some offer free search tools; I like Passport Health USA’s blog with new visa announcements and Visa HQ has an excellent search engine to find worldwide visa prices for all nationalities.
Confirm Where Overlanders Scored Their Visa
Contributors to iOverlander are mainly drivers but this is a killer tool for anybody traveling in West Africa. Here’s a hint to find posts specifically for visas, embassies, and immigration offices; use the “Find Places” tab to “Browse By Country” then “View List” for your country and remove the “Select All” in the “Place Types” tab and select only “Customs Immigration” and “Consulate Embassy” then click “Search” again to zero in on visa information. This is an awesome resource for updated embassy locations and details of how travelers scored their visa.
Ask Questions On Travel Forums
The Lonely Planet Thorn Tree country forums, Tripadvisor’s Africa forums, and the Facebook
West Africa Travellers group are great sources for visa information.
So, You Need A Visa, Now What?
For our readers that are do-it-yourself die-hards, start searching the web.
Our readers that like to avoid monotonous drudgery and appreciate a killer shortcut—like 200 links to eVisa portals, immigration departments, embassies, travel forums, blog posts, and over 100 GPS coordinates for embassies and consulates—can score their West Africa Tourist Visa Guide on Amazon for the price of a latte and immediately find out how to get their visa.
“And to provide value for our adventurous readers, Kim, here’s a little gold nugget to help kick off their West Africa trip.”
