Guinea

Visa speed

Neither the Act nor its decree sets a standard for deciding on a residence card — even though both fix deadlines for the applicant in many places. The only published deadline on the authority's side concerns extending a temporary-stay visa: the applicant is given a receipt for the documents lodged, valid for THREE WORKING DAYS, and at the end of that period must present themselves at the service, hand in the receipt and find out what was decided (Art. 15 of the decree). The period is thus set not as an obligation on the authority to answer, but as the moment at which the person should come for the answer. The deadlines addressed to the foreigner: an application to extend temporary stay, at least seven days (the Act) or seven working days (the decree) before expiry; an application to renew the resident card, at least three months ahead; a resident foreigner's child applies for their own card within fifteen days of turning fifteen; the foreigner's booklet is endorsed in the first quarter of each year, or within thirty days of return if the holder was abroad. Where a resident card or its renewal is refused, the decision is notified to the applicant, and if they are in the country they are invited to leave it within FIFTEEN DAYS of the date of notification (Art. 40 of the Act). The same period is given to anyone whose foreigner's booklet has been withdrawn or who has refused to produce it — on pain of prosecution (Art. 46).

Visa types: An entry visa is required of everyone but for two cases: passengers in transit aboard a ship or aircraft calling at a Guinean port, or crossing the country by land, and nationals of countries that have concluded reciprocity agreements with Guinea (Art. 6 of the Act). Being visa-exempt by reciprocity does not stop the authorities from barring entry on public-security grounds. The visa is granted for one or several entries and exits; its validity may not exceed THREE MONTHS unless an agreement provides otherwise (Art. 10). · What an entry visa requires (Art. 8): a written application, proof of sufficient means — where the person does not intend to engage in gainful activity — a return or onward ticket OR a deposit in foreign currency at the Central Bank of Guinea equal to the price of such a ticket, and two identical recent photographs. One provision worth knowing separately: **the visa may be granted or refused without the decision being reasoned** (Art. 12). · Transit visa — up to FIVE days, granted on the strength of onward travel documents (Art. 18). A transit passenger without a visa may either be accommodated at the place set aside for it at the border or turned back, with the costs borne by the carrier (Art. 6 of the decree). · Temporary-stay visa — for a stay of more than five days and no more than NINETY days; extendable by a further ninety at most (Arts. 21–22 of the Act). The extension application is filed at least seven days (the Act) or seven working days (the decree) before expiry. A return or onward ticket is required, along with proof that the person can live on their own means — failing which entry is refused (Art. 24). · Long-stay visa (visa de séjour de longue durée) — for those remaining beyond the period of the entry visa. It is individual, but extends to children under fifteen on request (Art. 25 of the decree). It confers the right to a residence card (Art. 27 of the decree). · Carte d'Étranger Résident — the main residence card for those establishing their residence in Guinea. Valid from ONE TO THREE YEARS and renewable (Art. 33 of the Act). The renewal application is filed no later than THREE MONTHS before expiry, and the renewal procedure is the same as for the original issue (Art. 39). · Carte d'expert étranger résident — for foreigners on long-term mission to the government and those employed under state contract. The card's validity may in no case exceed the term of the expert's employment contract; experts are exempt from every fee for visas, special cards and work permits (Arts. 29–31 of the Act). Their family members over fifteen receive resident cards subject to the same limit on validity. · Carte de Résident Privilégié — the privileged status, covered in detail in the permanent-residence section. · Carnet d'étranger — a separate booklet, obligatory for any resident over fifteen who trades, runs a business, practises a liberal profession or is employed in the private sector and is settling their residence in the country (Art. 43 of the Act). Holding the booklet attracts an ANNUAL visa fee, and the booklet itself must be presented for endorsement to the administrative authority of the place of residence during the first quarter of each year; anyone returning from abroad does so within thirty days of returning (Art. 34 of the decree). The booklet is issued only after the long-stay visa has been obtained. · Exit-and-return visa (sortie-retour) — for one or several journeys, provided they fall within the period allowed by the entry visa or its extension; the final departure must take place by the time that period expires (Art. 18 of the decree). · The repatriation bond is not a document but a condition without which residence is not permitted at all. Every foreigner must furnish guarantees of their own repatriation: a deposit of no less than the price of the ticket, or a bank guarantee letter (Arts. 48–49 of the Act). Failing to post it brings expulsion or refusal of entry (Art. 50). Exempt are diplomats and consular staff with their families, nationals of countries with reciprocity agreements, children under fifteen accompanying their parents — and PRIVILEGED RESIDENTS.

Collected on 8 August 2026 from Law L/94/019/CTRN of 13 June 1994 on the conditions of entry and residence of foreigners, and from Decree D/94/059 of the same day implementing it. Both turned up in the Official Gazette's search database (18,240 texts) and sit there as direct PDFs. On work: the Act ties the right to work not to the visa but to the documents the foreigner must bring WITH THEM. Someone arriving to work in the private sector must, on entry and beyond the usual formalities, carry the documents needed to pursue their profession (Art. 17 of the Act); someone working under contract to the state counts as an expert and produces the employment contract on first arrival (Art. 16). A long-stay visa requires authorisation from the competent body for the professional activity intended, and an employment contract endorsed by the authorised organisations (Art. 24 of the decree). The requirements running through every long-stay visa file: an application setting out the reasons, a valid passport, four identical recent photographs, a criminal-record extract no older than three months (where the country of origin issues such a document at all; otherwise an official substitute), and a medical certificate no older than three months from an accredited doctor stating that the applicant has no illness or infirmity rendering them unfit for the intended activity, with a French translation where needed. Religious workers additionally need a certificate from their congregation and authorisation from the supervising administration. A repatriation guarantee is obligatory for all immigrants apart from the exempted categories listed. A conceptual quirk: the decree divides foreigners differently from the Act. The Act (Art. 28) divides residents into experts, residents, PRIVILEGED residents, and refugees and stateless persons, while the decree (Arts. 21–23) divides them into immigrants and non-immigrants, where non-immigrants are only diplomats, people seconded under international cooperation, and students; everyone else is an immigrant. Both lists have to be read: they overlap but do not coincide. Not one ground has a price, and that is not a gap in the collection. The Act refers the charge for visas and extensions to an order of the finance ministry (Art. 9); the decree refers the charge for residence cards, the foreigner's booklet and their duplicates to the same order (Art. 30); and the order itself is absent from the Official Gazette. The gazette's database is searchable by title with an ordinary GET request, and "timbre" returns eleven acts on stamp duties — travel agencies, hotel investments, driving licences, transport documents — and none about visas or residence cards. Of the thirteen consolidated codes on the site, there is no tax code at all. So six grounds have the fee field deliberately empty and four carry a zero, where the exemption is written into the rule itself. Article 38 of the Act lists those exempt from the charges for a resident card by name: nationals of countries with which Guinea has reciprocity conventions; religious missionaries staying long-term and working for non-profit purposes; foreign women married to Guineans, and those divorced or widowed who wish to remain with their children; foreign students, trainees and scholarship holders. The expert's card and the cards of their family members are issued "sans frais" under Art. 28 of the decree. The same Art. 38 stipulates that the cost of MAKING the residence documents falls on the person concerned — exemption from the charges does not mean the card comes free, and the size of that cost is nowhere published. Guinean law has no permanent residence. The closest thing to it is the privileged resident on economic grounds, which requires TEN YEARS in the country — and even that stays a residence card whose term the Act never states, with no rule anywhere about passing to an indefinite title. That is why the column "does the term count toward permanent residence" is empty for all ten grounds. No ground has a processing standard, and the only period the acts do name belongs to something else: the receipt for papers filed to extend a temporary-stay visa is valid for three working days, after which the applicant must appear in person and ask what became of their request (Art. 15 of the decree). Neither the long-stay visa nor any card has such a period, so all ten carry `processingUnpublished`. Not found in the Official Gazette: the finance ministry's order on the tariff of visas and residence cards, to which both acts refer; a separate refugee act and any procedure for recognition as a refugee — Art. 37 of the Act merely names the card; the term of the privileged card and of the temporary resident card; the text of Labour Code L/2014/072/AN — the database marks it "Non publié au JO", so the rules for endorsing an employment contract by the authorised organisations, which the decree relies on, cannot be read anywhere.

Permanent residence after

10 years

Absence limits: The Act sets no general limit on absence, but one provision comes close: the foreigner's booklet must be presented for annual endorsement during the first quarter of each year, and if the holder is outside the country at that time, they present their residence documents within THIRTY DAYS of returning (Art. 34 of the decree). The resident card is withdrawn on the holder's death, on their expulsion, or if they cease to satisfy the conditions under which they obtained it (Art. 42 of the Act).

Guinea's settled status is called the "Carte de Résident Privilégié", and it is obtained not under one general qualifying period but on one of FOUR grounds listed in Article 34 of the Act. Only one of them expresses a period in years — hence the figure in the field, but it cannot be read as a general threshold. The grounds are these. **Social** — religious missionaries working on a non-profit basis. **Family**, where there is no period whatsoever: foreign women married to Guinean men, and divorced or widowed foreign wives of Guineans wishing to remain with their children resident in Guinea and having kept their nationality of origin; foreign men married to Guinean women; and foreigners with one Guinean parent. **Cultural** — foreign scholarship students at Guinean universities and training institutions. **Economic**, and here a period does appear: foreigners whose activities are tied to national economic development and who have RESIDED IN THE COUNTRY FOR AT LEAST TEN YEARS — entrepreneurs, industrialists, artisans and other business people established in Guinea. Ten years, in other words, is the threshold for the business ground, while a Guinean's spouse or a person with a Guinean parent obtains the same status with no residence period at all. The card is issued only after an administrative inquiry conducted by the immigration service (Art. 35). What the status actually confers, beyond its name: a privileged resident is exempt from the repatriation bond that is obligatory for every other foreigner — without a deposit or a bank guarantee letter, residence is not permitted, and failing to post it brings expulsion (Arts. 48–50). Neither the Act nor the decree names the validity of the privileged card itself: the ordinary resident card has its term stated outright (one to three years, Art. 33), the privileged one does not. The conditions for citizenship lie in another instrument, the nationality code, which was not read on this pass, so the naturalisation fields are empty.

Document certification

consular legalisation

The country does not accept apostilles: documents go through consular legalisation in three steps — ministry of justice, foreign ministry, consulate.

Limit

no limit

Quarantine

no

Antibody titre test

not needed

The requirements are read from the bilateral form "Veterinary Health Certificate for Export of Dogs and Cats from the United States of America to the Republic of Guinea". The veterinarian attests to the presence of a microchip if one is listed in the schedule of animals (so microchipping is desirable but not required); to a clinical examination on the date of issue showing no signs of infectious or contagious disease, including rabies; to the animal having originated in an area not under quarantine for rabies and not having been exposed to rabies; and to a current rabies vaccination stating the date, vaccine name, batch number and end date of the period of validity. The certificate is valid for thirty days from the date of issue. The form provides for no antibody titration at all and imposes no quarantine on arrival. Other vaccinations and treatments sit in an optional section. It sets no minimum interval between vaccination and travel, so the field is left empty. A caveat about the form itself: its attestations are word-for-word identical to the forms for Burkina Faso and Mali, which makes this a generic APHIS template rather than a separately negotiated bilateral document. It shows the minimum the receiving side has agreed to accept, but it does not replace the Republic of Guinea's own national rules where those are more detailed. The source is a bilateral veterinary certificate that the U.S. authority (APHIS) publishes as the form the receiving side accepts; the requirements are read from its mandatory fields and attestations. This describes import FROM the United States: the values (vaccination intervals, certificate validity) are set by the receiving side and do not depend on the country of departure, while the procedural part — accreditation of the veterinarian with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and endorsement by APHIS — is replaced by the equivalent of whatever country the animal leaves from. Read on 06.08.2026.

Bread, 500 g

$ 1,17

Milk, 1 l

$ 2,20

Eggs, 12

$ 3,59

Chicken breast, 1 kg

$ 7,25

Cheese, 1 kg

$ 17,0

Rice, 1 kg

$ 1,29

Potatoes, 1 kg

$ 1,55

Apples, 1 kg

$ 3,36

Coca-Cola / Pepsi, 2 l

$ 1,78

Total

$ 39,2

The same set for every country, so the comparison is fair.

Rent, 1 bedroom

$ 544 a month

Rent, 3 bedrooms

$ 1 719 a month

Utility bills

$ 158 a month

Home internet

$ 81,0 a month

Monthly transport pass

$ 28,0 a month

Single transport ticket

$ 1,43

Petrol, litre

$ 1,33

Cold medicine

$ 5,42 for a week

Country averages. City prices, where collected, are shown above and are more precise.

Life expectancy

60,9 years2024

Road deaths

37,4 per 100k2021

Unemployment

5,2 %2025

Unemployment, ages 15–24

7 %2025

Inequality (Gini)

29,62018 · data lags behind

Health spending per person

$ 59,3 a year

Air pollution, PM2.5

27,3 µg/m³2023

Access to clean water

74,2 %2024

Internet, fixed line

19,2 Mbit/s2026

Governance

Political stability

low · -1

Control of corruption

low · -1,2

Rule of law

low · -1,2

Government effectiveness

below average · -0,9

World Bank estimates on a −2.5 to +2.5 scale, higher is better.

Natural hazards

Earthquakes

0,1 out of 10

River floods

5,5 out of 10

Coastal floods

4,9 out of 10

Tropical cyclones

0 out of 10

Droughts

0,7 out of 10

Tsunamis

2,7 out of 10

Each value carries the year it refers to. “Data lags behind” means this country's figure was collected noticeably earlier than the rest. Natural hazards use one 0–10 scale and are meant to be compared against each other.

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