Togo

Visa speed

5 days for a decision on a visa, 30–45 days for the residence card

Visa types: A visa is required of everyone entering on a foreign travel document, apart from exemptions under treaties (art. 3 of decree No. 2022-050). The application goes through the national electronic platform, or by hand if the platform is unavailable (art. 4). The DGDN notifies its decision through the platform within five days at most (art. 6). · The immigration visa (visa d'immigration) is the only one expressly meant for “settling durably on Togolese territory”: for professional activity, study or family reunification. On entry its holder must obtain a residence card. · The professional visa covers particular occupations (journalism, reporting, trade, expert work, construction of public works) for no more than 90 days; a year is granted to the founder of a company under Togolese law or to a foreign professional who does not live in the country but carries on significant activity there and follows it regularly. The tourist visa covers travel and invitations to meetings and conferences. The courtesy visa is issued free of charge on a note verbale from the foreign ministry. · A visa is valid for between 15 and 365 days depending on its type; an extension inside the country may not exceed 90 days. An uninterrupted stay, and the sum of successive stays, may not exceed six months a year, except on the one-year professional visa. Beyond 90 days the holder of a tourist or immigration visa must show a residence card — failing which, expulsion (art. 12 of the decree). · The residence card (carte de séjour) becomes compulsory after six months of uninterrupted stay, or six months in total within a single year; the application goes to the DGDN (art. 5 of the law, art. 15 of the decree). The law's own definition of the card gives more than an ordinary residence permit: it “confers the right to paid or unpaid employment” and allows the holder to enter and leave without a visa on a travel document. · There are three kinds of residence card, differing in duration and price: temporary for one year — 200,000 CFA francs, ordinary for three years — 500,000, privileged for five years — 800,000. Students pay less: 100,000 temporary, 250,000 ordinary. Processing takes 30–45 days. Neither the law nor the implementing decree names any condition for the privileged card — no residence period, no investment, nothing — so prYears is left empty. Source for prices and timeline: the “Demande de carte de séjour” service card on the state portal service-public.gouv.tg. · An employee attaches to the application a hiring authorisation (autorisation d'embauche) from the competent authority, an employment contract, a certificate from the employer, the employer's company registration card and a personal tax clearance (art. 20 of the decree). A self-employed applicant attaches the company registration card, tax clearances for the company and for themselves, and a social-contributions clearance (art. 19). Separately, the law introduces an entry authorisation (autorisation d'entrée) for those coming to work: it allows the holder to work while the residence card is being processed (art. 12 of the law).

Togo is a rare case in which the agency itself posts both the law and the decree implementing it: the DGDN keeps them in its “Lois & Règlements” section, and the law is additionally posted as a Gazette issue with a text layer. Penalties for missing deadlines are published outright and are high by local standards: 500,000 CFA francs for working without an entry authorisation or a residence card, 1,000,000 for staying more than six months in a year without applying for a card, 300,000 for a late card renewal, 250,000 for a late visa extension; an employer of a foreigner staying illegally pays 1,000,000 (arts. 19–23 of the law). Cancelling the card of the head of a family may entail cancelling the cards of those dependent on them (art. 7). What the sources do not contain: the conditions for the privileged (five-year) card, and the veterinary rules for importing animals. The portal's “Agriculture and livestock” section is empty on the citizen side, and there is no UK export health certificate for cats and dogs to Togo — the gov.uk register holds only meat, poultry, day-old chicks and hides for the country. Sources: law No. 2022-005 of 15.04.2022 “relative à la police des étrangers en République togolaise” — read in the Official Gazette of the Togolese Republic (year 67, No. 15 ter of 22.04.2022), a PDF with a text layer; decree No. 2022-050 implementing it — a scan, read page by page; both are posted by the Directorate General of National Documentation (DGDN) itself at dgdn.gouv.tg/fr/lois-et-reglements. Tariffs and timelines come from the “Demande de carte de séjour” service card on the state portal service-public.gouv.tg. Checked on 05.08.2026. **Added on 24.08.2026, when the grounds were laid out into fields.** There are twelve grounds: five residence cards (the temporary one-year card and its student half-price version, the ordinary three-year card and its student half-price version, and the privileged five-year card), three kinds of immigration visa (professional, study, family), the annual professional visa, the short professional visa, the tourist visa and the entry authorisation. Number check: 12 of 12. **The prices of the residence card are named twice, and both times by a department.** The “Carte de séjour” section of the DGDN site and the service card on the state portal `service-public.gouv.tg` give the same five sums: 200,000 CFA francs for the temporary one-year card, 100,000 for its student version, 500,000 for the ordinary three-year card, 250,000 for its student version, 800,000 for the privileged five-year card. That matters because the cost decrees themselves — No. 2022-074 for cards and No. 2022-073 for visas — are posted by the agency as scans: `pdftotext` gets three and ten bytes out of them respectively. **The primary source is unreadable by machine, and the figures rest on two agreeing restatements by the same agency.** **The price of a visa depends on the length of the stay rather than on the ground.** The tourist visa and the short professional visa share one tariff, and it is a ladder: 25,000 for a single entry of 1 to 15 days, 35,000 for multiple entries over the same period, 45,000 for 16 to 30 days, 65,000 for 31 to 90. The immigration visa is issued for 31 to 90 days only and therefore costs exactly 65,000 whichever of its three purposes applies. The annual professional visa is 100,000. The fields carry the opening rates, and the whole ladder is described in the note on the fee. **The country no longer issues visas on arrival.** The platform ties this directly to the adoption of the law on the police of foreigners: anyone who turns up at the border without a ground for entry is turned back, and an application “awaiting validation” is not accepted at the control point. The usual handling time for a visa is five working days, and applicants are advised to file six or seven days ahead. **There is no separate work permit in the country — and yet a salaried worker needs a paper from the labour side.** The definition in article 2 of law No. 2022-005 says the residence card “confers the right to paid or unpaid employment”, and article 5 adds the right to enter and leave without a visa. A visa, by contrast, gives no right to work at all. Even so, the list of documents for the card requires a salaried worker to attach an authorisation to hire (autorisation d'embauche) from “the competent administration”, and the DGDN page mentions a “permis de travail from the ministry of employment”. **Neither document has a service card on the state portal or a page on the ministry's site**, which is why what is recorded is not that permit but the entry authorisation, which is published and which under article 12 of the law allows its holder to work while the card is being issued. **The entry authorisation is not applied for by the person arriving.** The application is filed by the host present in Togo, addressed to the Minister of Security, on behalf of someone living outside ECOWAS who is coming to carry out associative, educational, religious, professional or commercial activity. There is no separate fee — only a stamp duty of 5,000 CFA francs per arriving person; the target turnaround is two weeks and the authorisation runs for six months, renewable. Business people coming for a short prospecting trip are exempt. Neither the portal nor the charter gives a closed list of ECOWAS states, so no nationality restriction is set on the record. **The student card explicitly does not lead to settling.** The agency spells it out: holding an ordinary student card “does not entitle its holder to settle durably in the country after the end of their studies, unless they meet the criteria for another kind of residence document”. It is a rare case of a country closing off, in its own words, a transition that elsewhere is taken for granted. **What is still missing from the sources.** The conditions for the privileged card beyond the list of categories: no investment sum for an investor, no residence qualification, no procedure for recognising qualifications. There is no income threshold on any ground — “proof of sufficient means” is required and no figure is named anywhere. The lists of countries exempt from visas and covered by bilateral agreements sit behind the platform's “visa assistant” and are not served to a plain request. No one publishes a term for permanent residence or for citizenship, which is why `countsTowardPr` is empty on all twelve records: empty here is more honest than a uniform “yes”. The sources were read again on 24.08.2026: the “Carte de séjour” and “Lois & Règlements” sections of dgdn.gouv.tg, the “Demande de carte de séjour” and “Autorisation d'entrée au TOGO” service cards on service-public.gouv.tg, the “A propos du e-Visa” section of voyage.gouv.tg, and law No. 2022-005 in the Official Gazette.

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

Togo's own authority publishes no procedure, but a bilateral veterinary certificate with Togo does exist — agreed and printed by the United States Department of Agriculture: the “Veterinary Health Certificate for Export of Dogs and Cats from the United States of America to the Togolese Republic” (August 2025 revision, page updated 24.02.2026). Its mandatory fields and attestations show what the receiving side requires: a microchip (the field is marked required), a rabies vaccination current at the time of export with the vaccine, batch and validity stated, and confirmation that the animals are free of contagious disease and do not come from premises quarantined for rabies. The certificate is signed by an accredited veterinarian and endorsed by the US agency with an ink signature and an embossed seal. Neither antibody titration, nor post-arrival quarantine, nor a preparation period appears in the certificate, so those fields are left empty: what an agreed form does not ask for is not the same as a published “not required”. There is no UK export health certificate for cats and dogs to Togo — the gov.uk register holds only meat, poultry, day-old chicks and hides for the country. Checked on 05.08.2026.

Bread, 500 g

$ 0,97

Milk, 1 l

$ 2,20

Eggs, 12

$ 2,10

Chicken breast, 1 kg

$ 8,01

Cheese, 1 kg

$ 9,24

Rice, 1 kg

$ 1,32

Potatoes, 1 kg

$ 2,34

Apples, 1 kg

$ 2,88

Coca-Cola / Pepsi, 2 l

$ 1,51

Total

$ 30,6

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

Rent, 1 bedroom

$ 211 a month

Rent, 3 bedrooms

$ 776 a month

Utility bills

$ 121 a month

Home internet

$ 46,1 a month

Monthly transport pass

$ 62,5 a month

Single transport ticket

$ 0,35

Petrol, litre

$ 1,15

Cold medicine

$ 5,16 for a week

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

Life expectancy

62,9 years2024

Road deaths

22,7 per 100k2021

Unemployment

2 %2025

Unemployment, ages 15–24

3,4 %2025

Inequality (Gini)

37,92021 · data lags behind

Health spending per person

$ 59,6 a year

Air pollution, PM2.5

34,3 µg/m³2023

Access to clean water

64,8 %2024

Internet, fixed line

34,5 Mbit/s2026

Governance

Political stability

below average · -0,8

Control of corruption

below average · -0,7

Rule of law

below average · -0,6

Government effectiveness

below average · -0,8

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

Natural hazards

Earthquakes

0,1 out of 10

River floods

3 out of 10

Coastal floods

0,7 out of 10

Tropical cyclones

0 out of 10

Droughts

1,3 out of 10

Tsunamis

0 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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