Cameroon or Egypt
Two countries side by side across the same rows as the full comparison. A dash means the value is missing: fields are not filled with guesses. about the data
| Cameroon | Egypt | |
|---|---|---|
| Salary in IT | — | — |
| Citizenship | — | 10 years |
| Partner can work | — | — |
| Parents | — | — |
| Pets | no trouble | difficult |
| Pet limit | no limit | no limit |
| Quarantine | no | — |
| Residence permit fee | — | — |
| Rent, 2 bedrooms | $ 807 · estimate | $ 291 · estimate |
| Basket | $ 34,0 | $ 13,6 |
| Life expectancy | 63.97 | 71.81 |
| Homicides/100k | 6.76 | 1.31 |
| Natural hazards, 0–10 | 3.5 | 6.2 |
How the two sets of routes differ
Long-stay routes in this reference: Cameroon — 10, Egypt — 3. Types present in both: work. Cameroon adds: study and family.
Fees, thresholds and deadlines
Cameroon: fees range from 75,000 to 750,000 XAF. Routes with no fee: 1. Routes with a published decision deadline: 5; the shortest is 3 days. Egypt: fees range from 30 to 65 USD.
Beyond the first permit
Permanent status: Cameroon after 4 years, Egypt with no residence period. Citizenship: Egypt after 10 years; the other country publishes no term.
Cameroon in brief
Cameroon is a country with very dirty air and a marked price gap between its two main cities. On the World Bank scale from −2.5 to +2.5, political stability stands at −1.56, rule of law at −1.25, control of corruption at −1.22 and government effectiveness at −0.80. Life expectancy is 63.97 years, health spending 79.10 dollars per person a year, and basic water access reaches 71.41 per cent of the population. Mean PM2.5 concentration is 55.6 micrograms per cubic metre, one of the worst figures in the sample. Homicides run at 6.76 per 100,000, road deaths at 10.6 per 100,000, and the Gini index is 42.2. Natural risk overall is 3.5 out of 10 on INFORM and almost entirely water-related: floods 6.7, droughts 3.4, coastal hazards 2.6, whereas earthquakes are at 0.1 and there are no cyclones or tsunamis at all. The immigration framework has been published by the agency in full and rests on a single rule worth grasping in advance: the right to work is conferred not by the residence card but by the visa. Only the long-stay visa opens the right to paid activity and to study, and it is also a mandatory condition for the residence card. The employment contract, moreover, is endorsed by the labour minister before entry. The agencies state the visa issuing standard differently: the foreign ministry says 72 hours after pre-registration and 24 hours under the expedited procedure, DGSN says no more than 48 hours. The residence card is valid for two years and is renewed twice, the resident card for ten years; under decree No. 2025/059 of 28 February 2025 it is obtained after the SECOND renewal of the residence card, whereas the former section of the DGSN site spoke of the third. There is also a direct route through marriage, but here too the agency's texts diverge: the new section writes “the spouse of a person of foreign nationality”, the former one “the spouse of a Cameroonian citizen”. In both documents the fee depends on the applicant's nationality rather than on the type of document, and a separate rate is set aside for the French. What is not in this data: the agency publishes a processing standard only for the visa, but not for the residence card or the resident card; city populations are not given, because no official source separating the city from the region was found. The rent gap between Douala and Yaoundé is taken from the source as it stands — it is reproduced across all the lines, not just one, and the source offers no explanation for it.
Egypt in brief
Egypt is the most populous Arab country (around 107 million people in 2024 according to CAPMAS), with several parallel formal residence statuses for foreigners: employment residence through a Ministry of Manpower permit, student residence, citizenship in exchange for investment, and a residence permit for property ownership (a programme in place since the early 2020s). Naturalisation by investment requires no minimum period of prior residence: the decision is made by the prime minister on the recommendation of the specialised unit at the General Authority for Investment and Free Zones (GAFI), in exchange for an investment project, a property purchase or a foreign-currency deposit. Standard naturalisation on general grounds takes 10 years of residence and requires command of Arabic; dual citizenship is generally allowed with the authorities' permission. The cost of living is markedly lower than in Europe. Rule-of-law and control-of-corruption scores under the World Bank's methodology (WGI) are negative. Of the country's five largest and most tourism-significant cities, two — Hurghada and Sharm El Sheikh — are entirely oriented toward Red Sea tourism and have historically been sensitive to fluctuations in international air links.
Other comparisons
Cameroon or… Nigeria · Rwanda · Tunisia · Algeria · Tanzania · Kenya · South Africa · Angola
Egypt or… Gabon · Madagascar · Sierra Leone · Uganda · Zambia · Eswatini · Lesotho · Mozambique
More on each: Cameroon · Egypt. Build your own comparison — up to four countries
This material is for reference and is not legal, tax or immigration advice. Visa rules, tax thresholds and prices change. Before deciding anything, check the official sources and consult a licensed professional in the relevant country.