A few months ago when we announced we were becoming official agents of the Sierra Leone Citizenship by Investment program many people were skeptical “is this program even real?”
Yes it is. The first applicants have recently received their naturalization documents and passport in person in Sierra Leone directly from His Excellency the Vice President. The process can be done entirely remotely but some applicants choose to make a trip out of it.


For 99% of people this citizenship is useless
But not for everyone:
– People who want to do business in West Africa gain massively from having such a citizenship as getting residency in any other ECOWAS countries is very simple as a citizen of Sierra Leone
– People who want to create a legacy for their descendants by giving them access to a part of the world that will still be booming demographically for decades to come, in contrast to the rest of the world
– People who struggle with the lengthy and burdensome documentation required by some other citizenship by investment programs
– Crypto investors
– People who value flexibility (many family members can be added, tax certificates can be acquired, and name change is possible – all for a fee)
– Can be done entirely remotely
– People who are in a rush; short processing time
The price tax is $140,000, or $100,000 if you can prove you are of African descent.
I discussed with Stephen, the program architect, how this CBI came about.
If you want to find out more about this program, feel free to reach out to us and read the Sierra Leone CBI FAQ.
As a reminder, we can help you with all the main citizenship by investment programs in the market.
To a World of Opportunities,
The Wandering Investor.
Services in Sierra Leone
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Transcript of “Sierra Leone Citizenship by Investment – a conversation with the program architect”
LADISLAS MAURICE: Hello, everyone. Ladislas Maurice of The Wandering Investor. Today, we’ll be discussing the Sierra Leone Citizenship by Investment Program together with Stephen, who is the program designer and advisor to the Sierra Leonean Immigration Authority. Stephen, how are you?
STEPHEN: I’m great, Ladislas. It’s great to have this conversation with you. We’ve been seeking to arrange it for quite some time already.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Indeed, and we are having this call because the first applicants recently received their passports. Correct?
STEPHEN: Correct, yes. I’ve just returned from Freetown with a delegation of 13 of those to complete that mission, and obviously, sort of meet with a whole array of other government ministers and introduce some of our delegation as investors and future citizens that are ready to commence now that they’ve had a chance to see that this thing is absolutely for real.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Exciting. And where are the first new citizens originally from?
STEPHEN: From the United States, from a single-family office. And he is a passport collector. However, he’s principally a frontier economy investor. And he told me, when the program first launched, that he’d been waiting for something like this to come along for quite some time. Yeah, it was a no-brainer for him. He completed his due diligence relatively quickly and said, “Let’s do it.” So, what, 13, 14 weeks later, he’s in the presence of His Excellency the Vice President receiving his passport. Great stuff, really.
Background on the Sierra Leone citizenship by investment
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, exciting. Stephen, look, it’s pretty random starting a citizenship by investment program, at least an official one, because for years, there were all these countries kind of selling passports here and there on the whim of various officials in West Africa. But it’s the first official West African CBI that is functioning properly. How did all of this just come about? How did you make it happen?
STEPHEN: Well, I’m an immigration lawyer in Hong Kong. I’ve been doing what I do in Hong Kong for 32, 33 years now, become highly specialist in one jurisdiction, inbound to Hong Kong. And you can appreciate, immigration is principally boring stuff. It doesn’t exactly set clients alight when they’re thinking about how you go about attaining any kind of residency consents. It meant, down the years, I’ve been very creative in my approach. In my Hong Kong inbound practice, and there’s about 40 of us all together, we’re the biggest single practice in Hong Kong inbound. We have a website platform for different websites, cover every aspect of Hong Kong immigration. Been very creative in the use of video right from the very get go, application of technology, AI recently, and the rest of it.
Basically, I have a reputation in sort of immigration law circles for being creative in a small, single jurisdiction. And through a chain of relationships that I have in West Africa, I was basically invited in to make a presentation to the Sierra Leone Immigration Department who wanted to understand how they could actually begin to harness their immigration legislation, indeed their wider institutions, for the benefit of the country. Problem that Sierra Leone has, and all the ministers that I’ve spoken to have all confirmed this, things have to change. They realize things have to change.
But the difficulty has always been as a result of Leonardo DiCaprio, because when he released that movie, Blood Diamonds, the reputation for Sierra Leone was, unfortunately, miss set. And so most people, when they think about Sierra Leone, straight away, they think, “Oh, that movie. Don’t want anything to do with that.” But actually, the country is nothing like that anymore. The Civil War is long over, they’ve had two transfers of political parties over the course of the series of elections that have been properly administered and organized, democracy is very entrenched, and the country is on the march, but it needs to attract direct foreign investment. And they don’t have a lot of available resources, sort of at their immediate disposal, even though the country is very, very wealthy from a natural resources’ perspective, just that they can’t get the stuff out of the ground.
They were looking to seek to use their immigration legislation to empower new citizen stakeholders to come and engage in investment. And they gave me a brief that said, “Look, can you come up with something unique, interesting, and remarkable?” And so, I said, “Yeah.” I said, “The first point to make about Sierra Leone is, if you think that the modern Sierra Leone is the Sierra Leone of blood diamonds, and naturally you conclude today that the modern Cambodia is the Cambodia of the Killing Fields, clearly, the mental models all need adjusting.” And that has certainly proven to be the case, as I’ve had the opportunity to sort of take this story to market.
Looking at what was going on in Kigali, and they thought, well if Rwanda can come back from a genocide, and through the right kind of leadership, they can produce kind of like a city that was something akin to where Dubai was 15 years ago, then why not Sierra Leone? That was sort of the genesis of the discussions, and I was able to bring creativity into play. And thankfully, these people are very smart, and they said, “This makes sense to us, let’s do it.” Lo and behold, I found myself, for the very first time, leaving the remit of Hong Kong immigration and in Sierra Leone, which two years ago was something that I never anticipated. But here we are.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah. I mean, it’s a no-brainer for the country. The country essentially gets free money, free publicity, and a bunch of high-net-worth ambassadors, really, ambassadors for the country all over the world that some of them will actually invest and do business in Sierra Leone and help to develop the country beyond the donation that they made.
How does the Sierra Leone CBI work
LADISLAS MAURICE: Can you just give us a quick rundown of the actual program?
STEPHEN: Yeah. Essentially, it’s special naturalization. It’s completed in 90 days, it’s $140,000 donation for a single applicant. It’s $10,000 per accompanying family applicant. The program all hinges off the back of robust due diligence, and the administration of the program is designed to be simple, on the basis that, if you can get through due diligence, why make the paperwork administratively burdensome for applicants? Why throw logs at the feet of these intending new citizen stakeholders? That allows us to truncate the processing time down to 90 days.
In designing the program, I looked at what was going on elsewhere in all the CBI and RBI spaces, and realized that, in many ways, the tail was wagging the dog when it comes to the preparation and the workup of the files. I said to the country, “Look, if you want to attract investors, why get in their way? Make it happen for them. As long as the due diligence is good, then everything else will fall into place.” Because this is not a mass program, we’re not expecting 100,000 families. Our initial target is 6,000. We can only absorb so much new foreign direct investment in an organized fashion. The numbers we’ve put together makes sense for the country, makes sense for us as the administrator of the program, and makes sense for the market, because, as I say, it’s not mass market. It’s not going to compete with all the usual suspects.
There’s some enhancements to be had in terms of the passport itself. It will, in due course, be upgraded. When the upgrade and the technology of the passport comes into play, there’ll be another twenty-odd countries that come visa-free straight away. It’s small, baby incremental steps, and the early foray into the marketplace has proven that the product is being very well received.
Target market for Sierra Leone citizenship by investment
LADISLAS MAURICE: And who’s the target market for this program? Because, I mean, for example, when I posted about this program on social media, and I got so much hate for it, I think it’s a great option. I understand who the target market is, but I want to hear it from you.
STEPHEN: People who are seriously looking for a safe way to invest in the Africa story. That’s what it boils down to. Kind of those folks who also want access to ECOWAS as well. I always say, get 15 countries for the price of one. You get 90 days visa-free access to all the ECOWAS countries. And because of the nascent state of the residency laws in each of the jurisdictions that make up ECOWAS and the ECOWAS treaty, the economic contribution that one needs to make to get your residency permissions is, at this time, limited to the cost of basically paying the application fee, which is, in some countries, $30 or $40. In the case of Cape Verde, which is obviously a lovely place to be, it’s only about $400. It’s very small money, I’m told. Literally, you get 15 countries for the price of one.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, easy access to ECOWAS. I mean having lived in Ghana for a few years and traveled quite a lot in West Africa, I can tell you, as a Westerner, going around trying to get visas in these countries is a pain. They do not make it easy. A lot of the countries do not have online visa facilities, you have to go to embassies, and they’re really not pleasant to deal with. For people that have a lot of business activities in West Africa, this is actually a total no-brainer.
STEPHEN: Yeah. And the truth is, it’s a frontier economy, and everything’s investable. You put your money into something, you’re absolutely going to get a great return on that investment. And it doesn’t have to be all–
LADISLAS MAURICE: Or, lose it all. [laughs]
STEPHEN: It doesn’t have to be all the usual suspect real estate opportunities. Obviously, those are lying on the ground to be picked up, though. But fundamentally, you can put money into anything in the country, because it’s massively underinvested, and you’ll do very well out of it. Fortune favors the brave.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, you need to be brave, and you need to be on the ground a lot. I mean, they’re frontier markets, they’re pretty hard, operationally speaking, but yeah, a lot of opportunities, that’s for sure.
Can my children inherit Sierra Leone citizenship?
LADISLAS MAURICE: Does this citizenship go down the generations for people who acquire it through investment?
STEPHEN: Yes, it does.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Let’s say, I become a citizen of Sierra Leone, I make the donation, and then I have my child with a non-Sierra Leonean outside of Sierra Leone, let’s say, in Mexico. I mean, I recently had a kid in Mexico. Could I then register this child at the nearest Sierra Leonean High Commission, or embassy, or back in Sierra Leone and get that, essentially, White kid a Sierra Leonean citizenship?
STEPHEN: Yes, you can. There’s only one class of citizenship.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Is there a limit in terms of generations?
STEPHEN: Not to my understanding, no. There’s nothing in the Citizenship Act that serves to that end.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Some countries, for example, in Latin America, make a difference between someone who was naturally born, and someone who acquired the citizenship, and then after a few generations, the citizenship disappears. But yes, in Sierra Leonean law, there is absolutely no distinction, unlike a lot of the Caribbean citizenships, where it is capped in terms of generations, and there are fees each time.
STEPHEN: I think it’s also worth pointing out that it’s a British common law jurisdiction. The judges and the lawyers were always in court, the Privy Council is ultimately the final arbiter as to how Sierra Leone law works. It’s very subject to the rule of law. And because they had such a torrid time in the Civil War, which was actually a spillover from Liberia, where the men with guns came to take control of all the natural resources, organically, the sort of tribes and the peoples that make up Sierra Leone have never been sort of at each other’s throats. They’ve learned to live peacefully, historically, in the African context, and they’ve understood how the social fabric of a country can be torn apart by civil war. They are committed to doing things by the book, because they know doing it by the book is far better than the chaos that results from not having the rule of law.
Sierra Leone investor tours for aspiring citizens
LADISLAS MAURICE: And you organize tours to Sierra Leone for prospective applicants who want to go to Sierra Leone, check out the country for themselves, meet some of the officials, correct?
STEPHEN: Yeah. We have an integral part of the program is the GO-FOR-GOLD Club. The GO-FOR-GOLD Club is designed to provide all the support that new citizen stakeholders need if they’re going to come and actually take advantage of the citizenship and invest in the country. Part and parcel of that initiative is to create the opportunity for intending citizen stakeholders to come and, in a sense, kick the tires in advance, just to see for themselves what it’s all about. We’ve just, as I say, completed our first delegation, which was massively successful, exceeded my expectations beyond all measure.
Can tell you that there’s discussions about privatization of state assets afoot, there’s talks about repurposing the old airport terminal building, there’s talks about bringing a new delegation in towards the end of this year to look at funding the bridge from the airport to the main city.
LADISLAS MAURICE: That’s needed.
STEPHEN: Yeah, indeed, very much so. Yeah, the GO-FOR-GOLD Club creates the environment for sensible investors to get the confidence that they need to be able to invest in the country and allow the country to achieve its national development objectives. I think the next one, as I said, is October, November, still in the pipeline.
Sierra Leone Heritage Naturalization by investment
LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay. And can you tell us about the heritage option, which is only $100,000 as opposed to $140,000?
STEPHEN: Yeah. Essentially, if you can demonstrate that you go back five generations African heritage, continental Africa, you get a $40,000 discount on your donation quantum. DNA test, African ancestry test. It’s the same test that the country has been using under their ancestral roots program for the last few years.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Who’s the target market for this option?
STEPHEN: Principally, continental Africans, the ancestral descendants, chain of causation connection down through the DNA sequence, would, obviously, anticipate anybody that can go back five generations. African Americans are, obviously, a big prospect pool of candidates for citizenship in Sierra Leone via that route. But we’re not targeting that market, per se. We’ve put it out there to say, look, if you’ve got African ancestry, you’re welcome. Come and bring your ancestry, and get settled in Sierra Leone, and help Sierra Leone achieve its objectives.
Sierra Leone citizenship for access to West Africa
LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. Look, this is really fascinating. This is an exciting program. I’m happy to see such initiatives in Africa, having spent most of my twenties there. This is absolutely a program that I would consider for myself. And look, is it something that I would use now? No, but it would be something that I would be happy to give to my children, knowing that just by making a $140,000 donation now, essentially, all my future generations, as long as they file the paperwork each time someone’s born, will have, essentially, unfettered access to West Africa and to the growth story in West Africa. In a world of declining demographics everywhere, Africa is an exception.
Will this be an interesting call option to have for my descendants in 50 years, in 100 years, to say, hey, we can go do business in West Africa easily, as opposed to everyone else? I think it is.
STEPHEN: One of my first investor clients, who’s in the pipeline now, has bought the citizenship for that exact reason. His lovely wife is due to have a baby after the naturalization process is complete, and this is his gift to his unborn child.
How to learn more about the Sierra Leone CBI
LADISLAS MAURICE: Exciting. Great. At The Wandering Investor, we’re official agents of the Sierra Leone Citizenship by Investment Program. If you want to find out more information, there’s a link below in the description. Literally, it’s the most complete FAQ and information toolkit there is. And then feel free to get in touch with us if you have more questions, and we can help you process your application from A to Z. And you can pay directly through bank transfers or crypto is also accepted.
Stephen, thank you very much for your time today. Really appreciate it.
STEPHEN: Great stuff. See you soon, Ladislas. Ciao.