Liberia or Mali
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
| Liberia | Mali | |
|---|---|---|
| Salary in IT | — | — |
| Citizenship | 2 years | — |
| Partner can work | — | — |
| Parents | — | — |
| Pets | — | no trouble |
| Pet limit | no limit | no limit |
| Quarantine | — | no |
| Residence permit fee | $ 750 | — |
| Rent, 2 bedrooms | $ 281 · estimate | $ 352 · estimate |
| Basket | $ 20,2 | $ 19,9 |
| Life expectancy | 62.32 | 60.67 |
| Homicides/100k | 3.09 | — |
| Natural hazards, 0–10 | 3.9 | 4.2 |
How the two sets of routes differ
Long-stay routes in this reference: Liberia — 11, Mali — 10. Types present in both: work, study, family and retirement. Mali adds: investment.
Fees, thresholds and deadlines
Liberia: fees range from 25 to 750 USD. Routes with no fee: 1. Routes with a published decision deadline: 10; the shortest is 1 days. Mali: not a single route publishes its fee.
Beyond the first permit
Citizenship: Liberia after 2 years; the other country publishes no term.
Liberia in brief
Liberia has flooding as its principal natural hazard and an immigration authority unusually transparent for the region. On the World Bank scale from −2.5 to +2.5, government effectiveness is −1.25, control of corruption −1.05, and rule of law −0.87; political stability at −0.23 is markedly better than its governance neighbours. Life expectancy is 62.32 years, health spending 103.94 dollars per person per year, basic water access reaches 78.83 percent of the population, and the mean PM2.5 concentration is 17.92 micrograms per cubic metre — the air here is appreciably cleaner than the regional average. Road deaths run at 15.3 per 100,000. Overall natural hazard is 3.9 out of 10 on INFORM, and it is almost entirely water-borne: flooding 7.5, coastal hazards 4.1, tsunami 2.5, while earthquakes at 0.1 and drought at 0.4 are practically absent. The unemployment figures — 2.88 percent overall and 2.3 among young people — reflect a labour market that is almost wholly informal rather than an absence of trouble finding work. Prices are spread wide: a one-bedroom rents for 208.55 dollars a month, with utilities at 58.9 and a monthly transit pass at 11.37. The immigration service publishes a service delivery charter for 2024–2029, a rare document for the region: for every service it gives a code, the conditions, the fee, the target turnaround and the responsible unit. Family there is not a separate procedure but a separate line in the tariff — a residence permit for a spouse and for a minor child is processed exactly as the principal one. There is no permanent status in the country, and that follows from the law rather than from the charter's silence: the Alien and Nationality Law of 1973 knows two long-stay classes of foreigner — "alien residents" with a term of up to a year, and "immigrants", who enter intending to remain indefinitely and become citizens — but both must hold the permit of residence under § 6.1, and it is good for exactly one year, renewed annually. Fifteen years lived there move a person not into a permanent class but into the same annual one. There is one way out of that cycle — naturalisation — and § 21.1 attaches a racial condition to it: only Negroes and persons of Negro descent are admitted to citizenship. For everyone else the annual permit is the terminal status. Naturalisation itself has two stages: a declaration of intention, then, no sooner than two years later, a petition, backed by two years of continuous lawful residence before it is filed. What is not in this data: the procedure for bringing in cats and dogs is described neither by a national source nor by other countries' veterinary authorities — neither the British nor the American service has ever drawn up an export certificate for Liberia. Whether the 1973 rule stripping citizenship on naturalisation abroad is still in force could not be checked: the parliament's site does not respond, and no amendments appear in the Ministry of Justice's sections.
Mali in brief
Mali has the second-lowest political stability figure in this guide: −2.49 on the World Bank scale among the 173 countries with data. Government effectiveness is −1.29 (fifteenth from the bottom out of 172), rule of law −1.09 and control of corruption −0.98. Life expectancy is 60.67 years — seventh from the bottom out of 174. Health spending is 33.98 dollars per person per year, twelfth from the bottom out of 167. Basic water access reaches 86.36 percent of the population, with a mean PM2.5 concentration of 35.52 micrograms per cubic metre. Road deaths run at 20.2 per 100,000. Overall natural hazard is 4.2 out of 10 on INFORM, and unusually double-edged: flooding at 7.9 and drought at 7.4 together, while earthquakes are almost absent (0.1) and there is no sea at all — coastal, cyclone and tsunami exposure are all zero. Unemployment is 2.83 percent and 3.88 among young people: as with its regional neighbours, that describes an almost wholly informal labour market rather than ease of finding work. Prices are low: a one-bedroom in Bamako rents for 228 euros a month, with utilities at 54 and a monthly transit pass at 12.21 dollars. The immigration regime is published as a pair — Law No. 04-058 of 2004 and Decree No. 05-322 of 2005 — and together they set out the whole procedure. What defines it is a fork at the entrance: the Act divides foreigners into non-immigrants and immigrants by INTENTION rather than by occupation, and which one you claim determines your document. A non-immigrant gets a residence visa of no more than a year, renewable. An immigrant gets a resident card for five years — but the application for it is lodged within 15 DAYS of entry, so the choice must be made at once. There is no permanent status in the country: the Act's establishment section runs to three articles, and its maximum is that same five-year renewable card. It also lapses of its own accord if the holder has been away for more than six consecutive months. Marriage to a citizen gives a residence authorisation AS OF RIGHT rather than at the authority's discretion — provided the marriage is at least three months old. The same provision grants it as of right to citizens' children, to the dependent ascendants of a citizen's spouse, to the parent of a Malian child, and to the family of a resident-card holder. One feature is rare even for the region: residence is conditioned on a REPATRIATION GUARANTEE, and it applies even to nationals of countries with which Mali has freedom-of-movement agreements. The deposit equals the price of a ticket in the most economical class and is paid into the Treasury within 15 days of arrival; exempt are diplomats, officials and military personnel on mission, nationals of bordering countries travelling by land, tourists in their own vehicles, and students at Malian institutions. What is not in this data: neither instrument sets a processing standard — the Act's 27 articles and the decree's 74 were read in full, and while deadlines abound in them, every one is addressed to the foreigner or the carrier, none to the authority. The conditions for citizenship lie in the Nationality Code of 1995, which was not read on this pass. The city's population is not given: no official source separating Bamako from the district could be found.
Other comparisons
Liberia or… Nigeria · Rwanda · Tunisia · Algeria · Tanzania · Kenya · South Africa · Angola
Mali or… Gabon · Madagascar · Sierra Leone · Uganda · Zambia · Eswatini · Lesotho · Mozambique
More on each: Liberia · Mali. 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.