West African Visas

[dleufer]

Hi guys,
I was wondering if anyone could give me some info on West African Visas. Me and a couple of friends are planning to go to Guinea to do Famoudou's course in January and then travel to Burkina Faso and Mali too. We're oging to fly into Banjul in The Gambia and then travel down to Conakry by bus or bush taxi. I presume We'll have sort out Gambian, Senegalese and Guinean visas before we leave but would we need to sort out the others also or can you get them at the border?
Also does anyone know if these countries have embassies in Ireland? Or if they don't, how do you go about getting a visa?

p.s. Being able to ask questions like tihs and more than likely get good answers makes me really appreciate this forum and the people who contribute to it. 10 years ago it would have been impossible to find out all the info that's on here.

[the kid]

you'll find all that info in a lonely planet or rough guide to west africa. Well worth getting an up to date copy. Info on embassies, travel between countries, accomodation, customs, language, maps etcetc.

[michi]

Me and a couple of friends are planning to go to Guinea to do Famoudou's course in January and then travel to Burkina Faso and Mali too.

For Mali, I got strong recommendations from several people to avoid the embassy in Paris and apply with their embassy in Tokyo instead. They were very efficient and got the Visa to me within a few days.

Cheers,

Michi.

[dleufer]

Yes!!! My Malian visa arrived in the post today!
I took your advice and avoided the embassy in Paris. I phoned them several times and when I eventually spoke to someone they said they had nothing to do with visas and put me through to the Malian consulate. I navigated my way through a maze of answering machines and people denying they had anything to do with visas for about 45 minutes and then realized that under no circumstances did I want to entrust these people with my passport.
I then checked for other embassies and found one in Switzerland. I figured, small country, excellent infrastructure, German reliability, sounds good. And it was. Everytime we rang we got through to the same person and she was very helpful. We sent her 6 passports, 6 application forms and 6 passports and recieved our passports complete with 6 3 month multi-entry visas 5 days later. It cost roughly 75 euro each for the visa plus postage. One problem was we had to send cash and it had to be Swiss francs which were hard to find but other than that it was cool.
I recommend avoiding the massive Parisian embassy and going with the Swiss if you can.

***But they only speak French!!!!*****

[Michel]

If you'd like to pay in euro's: my visa for Mali I received within a week from the Malian embassy in Brussels. I am from the Netherlands.