Our clients for the São Tomé and Príncipe Citizenship by Investment program are truly diverse. We have had clients from over 11 countries apply for the program, and their specific use cases are even more varied. Our clients include:
- People who understand that the future lies in Africa and wish to establish a sovereign foothold now.
- People looking for the most affordable, accessible second passport without hassle.
- Citizens of countries like Germany and Poland who envision it safeguarding their freedom and mobility in times of war.
- Entrepreneurs who are using it to broaden access to business and banking opportunities in specific jurisdictions and enhance their asset privacy.
- Stateless clients seeking a durable citizenship and travel document.
But some clients have expressed an interest in actually living on the island some day.
So I visited São Tomé and Príncipe last month with my team to gather on-the-ground insights for those clients looking to dig their heels into this tiny island and craft a fully integrated Plan B.
Is São Tomé a viable Plan B?
- Yes, foreigners can buy real estate and many of them already do. But liquidity is extremely thin, and much of the most desirable coastal land and property has been bid up over the past couple decades by Portuguese and European speculators.
- It is a secure, beautiful tropical locale with adequate infrastructure, but the lifestyle is quiet and amenities for expats are limited. Air connectivity, medical care and other key facilities are, for now, distinctly lacking.
- Fish, fruit and water are plentiful. But beyond this, the island is heavily reliant on imports and may suffer in a pandemic, war or energy crisis.
All of the above notwithstanding, it is far outside of geopolitical crosshairs, and for some may constitute the ideal hideout if things go badly.
We are licensed agents for this CBI program, as well as the Sierra Leone Citizenship by Investment Program. We are regularly receiving approvals for our clients, and we are happy to announce that our earliest clients are receiving their passports in hand for both programs.
To a World of Opportunities,
The Wandering Investor
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Transcript of “Expat Life in São Tomé and Príncipe for CBI Citizens – A Viable Plan B?”
LADISLAS MAURICE: Hello. So we just spent eight days here in São Tomé to do some due diligence on the citizenship by investment program. We’re licensed agents. We had a really busy eight days. We met with government officials, local entrepreneurs, did some tourism, met with banks, accountants, etc. to really get an overview of the country, of the program and to help our clients get better insight into what they’re buying into essentially. Costa, who’s our head of CBIs, and I, we met in Ghana what, 11 years ago.
COSTA: 11 years ago now, yeah.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah. 11 years ago. I was working there, you were working there. That’s how we met.
COSTA: Yeah.
LADISLAS MAURICE: So we’ve been around Africa. I spent seven years of my life on the continent. I traveled all over the continent. And for us, this was both our first time on São Tomé, and we’ll be discussing just our impressions, what we learned, what surprised us, what didn’t surprise us. So Costa, how would you just describe this, this trip.
Is Sao Tome an easy place to travel to?
COSTA: It’s been really laid back. It doesn’t have a lot of the usual difficulties that you experience as a tourist in Africa. You know, there’s very little harassment, there are very few touts, you know, when people ask you to like go on a tour or to buy, you know, a souvenir or something like this. It’s not very pushy. And honestly, it makes the experience a lot more pleasant. You don’t really feel like anybody’s here to take advantage of you, to try to suck money out of you. You can really kind of like let your guard down and enjoy the place. You don’t have to really worry about your things getting stolen. Honestly speaking, I’ve really enjoyed it.
Is Sao Tome and Principe a safe country?
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, safety is a big one. Africa is not always very safe, depending on where you go, uh but here it felt very, very safe.
COSTA: Yeah, like at our guest house, you know, we would leave all our belongings inside. You didn’t have to worry about putting anything in a safe. It doesn’t feel like there’s petty crime nor violent crime.
Food and drink in Sao Tome and Principe
LADISLAS MAURICE: The food was also a pleasant surprise. I mean, when you go into like Central Africa, West Africa, as a Westerner, the food, particularly in English-speaking countries, like Ghana, you know, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the food can be, as a Westerner, very, really it’s not what we’re into. Francophone Africa is usually fine. But here, I mean, it was delicious.
COSTA: It was delicious. I mean, it’s… I mean, we didn’t really deviate from the seafood options that much, but, you know, you see guys coming out of the ocean every day, bringing buckets of fresh fish. Like none of the seafood you eat is frozen. You can get amberjack, red snapper, tuna steaks, octopus. It’s really, really good seafood, super fresh, and they know how to prepare it. I mean, it really like was pretty much on par with anything that you’d have in the South Mediterranean. And the portion sizes are huge.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, good portion sizes. And not too expensive. Africa can be quite expensive, but here prices are not outrageous at all. I mean, these beers, we’re in a bar, we’re paying like a dollar eighty per beer, and it’s I think it’s imported from Portugal.
COSTA: Yeah, alcohol, not expensive at all. Fish, you know, if you go to a tourist restaurant, it might be something like 12 to 14 euros for a big plate of fish with sides. If you go to a more local place, it probably goes down to like five or six euros. And the quality doesn’t really, you know, the quality is pretty much on par. They’re making good fish everywhere, it seems.
Transport and energy infrastructure in Sao Tome
LADISLAS MAURICE: Infrastructure wise, I didn’t really know what to expect, but it turns out it’s generally okay. The main roads are okay up to a certain point. Then you as soon as you start going a bit too far away from the capital city, then it turns into essentially…
COSTA: Muddy potholes, you know. Also as far as electricity, there definitely are frequent power cuts. We were staying in places that all had diesel generators, so it didn’t really impact our access to light, internet, things like this.
LADISLAS MAURICE: But it’s something they definitely need to to work on.
Cost of gasoline in Sao Tome
LADISLAS MAURICE: And that’s yeah, that’s the priority. Really for the citizenship by investment program, is taking that money and building up infrastructure. And I think the priority is literally energy. Trying to fix this is the grid problem. And gas is cheap for the car. It was dollar, like roughly a dollar forty for one liter of gasoline.
COSTA: It was roughly only what, a little under 30 euros to fill up the car after five or six days of driving.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah.
COSTA: So, not bad at all.
LADISLAS MAURICE: So I don’t know if there are subsidies or if they get a really good deal from Angola or I don’t know what the deal is, but these prices are much more affordable than what you find anywhere else really in in the world, especially for a country that does not produce oil and gas.
COSTA: Yet.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yet.
Energy exploration in Sao Tome
LADISLAS MAURICE: All right. So I I think this is also an interesting call option. So right now the country’s relatively poor, but I’d say you don’t see like abject poverty.
COSTA: Yeah, so this is actually really interesting, is, you know, very basic needs seem to be covered. It’s a small population. It’s only 250,000 people on paper, but, you know, we’re talking to people and some people estimate that as many as 25% have emigrated to Portugal.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Portugal opened the floodgates a few years ago to immigration and people just flooded in from Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé, and Brazil, all the former Portuguese colonies. So when people had that opportunity, they just went. Now it’s hardened again, so the flows have stopped.
COSTA: Yeah, even in the capital city, it does not feel dense at all. You know, you go around streets at night, there are very few people. I mean, you contrast it with a country like Nigeria, which obviously has an overflowing population, it’s something like 240 million people, you know, you go to the capital city and there’s obvious scarcities of basic needs like this. You know, and people really need to hustle to get through the day. And you don’t really feel like they’re living that same reality here at all. It’s not to say that they have everything, of course, but basic needs here are generally covered, relative to other countries in the region.
Expat community in Sao Tome and Principe
LADISLAS MAURICE: People are really friendly and we met quite a few expats as well. The expat community is mostly Portuguese, but we came across quite a few French people. I think they’re like 30 French people that live full-time on the island, Italians, inevitably you always find Italians in random corners of Africa. Anglophones?
COSTA: Not too many. Not too many, but it at the same time, you know, the Portuguese have a pretty high proficiency in English and they’re very comfortable switching between it. If we met Portuguese expats while we were out and about, they had no problem, you know, switching to English for us. I don’t think the same can really be said about Francophone Africa, where the French language is very much dominant. If you’re an English-speaking person, it’s harder to have a robust social scene. Whereas here, I think that if you did not speak Portuguese, you would still, you know, make friends, get by, it’s not that much of a problem.
French language in Sao Tome and Principe
LADISLAS MAURICE: At school, the second language is not English, but rather French. That I did not expect. I came quite a few people that spoke fluent French, accentless. I mean, people are talented with languages. Yeah, when they learn a language, they learn it well.
COSTA: And the story behind the Francophone thing is the closest country geographically is, you know, obviously not Portugal or like, you know, not Nigeria, but it’s actually Gabon. I think that there was some a temporary emigration from here to Gabon, people would go, you know, work in houses and work in probably the energy industry, and as a result their children learned French and came back. At least that’s sort of like the explanation we were given. So there’s still, I think, a pretty close relationship with Gabon. A lot of the people that you meet in service positions, you know, people at banks, when you go to get a SIM card, etc. The people working there will speak French comfortably.
LADISLAS MAURICE: And why Gabon? Because Gabon is essentially an oil state. It’s one of the richest countries in Central Africa. This is what also could have happened to São Tomé, we’re talking about the call option on oil and gas. There are a lot of exploration blocks. You’ve got some of the largest companies in the world that are doing exploration, like Petrobras, which recently bought a block.
COSTA: Shell.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Shell, etc. I think Total Energy from France was also involved for a while. Because when you look, the Gulf of Guinea is full of oil and gas. Whether it be along Central Africa, so, you know, Angola, Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, even a little bit in Cameroon. In West Africa, you’ve got Nigeria, there’s oil and gas in Ghana and Ivory Coast, etc. Essentially, the whole Gulf of Guinea has oil and gas. So São Tomé being right in the middle of the Gulf of Guinea, not that far off from the coast, the assumption is there has to be oil and gas somewhere. Oil and gas sources still haven’t been found. I would tend to think that eventually, you know, someone will, you know, strike gold. Like I can put it this way. And at that point it’ll just be, you know, oil money flowing and I would expect land prices to, you know, do 5X, 10X, you know, because land is pretty cheap here. That’s pretty interesting.
Tourism potential in Sao Tome
LADISLAS MAURICE: I’d say a negative aspect of the country, but which also shows the potential, is right now their tourism strategy is a little questionable. They seem to be very much focused on European tourism. It’s like great, okay, but the only flights are to Portugal. And it’s not like Portuguese people have a lot of disposable income. It’s objectively a crappy market. I mean, we’re talking of the poorest amongst the poorest people in Europe, that being your main target market. With like very little upside either. Around them, they have all these like high growth African markets, but they’re forcing visas onto these people. So you’ve got places like Nigeria with, I don’t know, like 240 million people.
COSTA: Yes.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Lagos, just so many millionaires, multi-million, like so much money in Lagos.
COSTA: The upper crust of these countries, one – has more purchasing power than a middle class Portuguese person. Two – they love spending money. You know, like if a Nigerian or a Cameroonian goes on vacation, you know, they want to go to the expensive club, they want to stay at the nice resort. It’s not really clear, one, you know, if they can easily get a visa, they can’t really right now, and two, I mean, if you wanted to spend a lot of money here, you wouldn’t really know how to do it currently.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Look and the reasoning is, oh, well, you know, we’re worried about illegal immigration. It’s like, what, you’re a little island. You shouldn’t be worried about illegal immigration. You can like kick them out pretty easily. Just have a program in place where you get the locals to snitch on the illegal aliens. People will snitch on the illegal aliens. To closest point, you look at Lagos, you arrive at Lagos Airport, there’s private jets everywhere. And they have nowhere to go. They literally have nowhere to go. So where do rich Nigerians go on vacation or for the weekend, they go to Accra in Ghana. And but I’m pretty sure a lot of them would like to bring their families or their mistresses or their friends over to, because yeah, that’s the market, over to São Tomé, it’s just like an hour and a half flight. You know, it’s nice, it’s calm, it’s safe. You know, they can get good food.
Beaches and swimming in Sao Tome
COSTA: And the other thing, you know, we lived in Ghana and, you know, the whole coast of Africa, of West Africa is beach. You know, all of the population centers are on the coast. Sure, you can look at the beach, but the swimming’s kind of mid. It’s kind of like murky sand beaches, rough waves, etc. Polluted. I mean, São Tomé, I mean this, this place is a gem. It’s an absolute tropical paradise, you know, it has everything that you’d expect from an island like this. It’s very…
LADISLAS MAURICE: And leaving that to the Portuguese is just a waste.
COSTA: That’s right.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Other people should benefit from that.
COSTA: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot to enjoy here and the tourism sector is just very obviously living below potential. Air connectivity as well. You know.
Air connectivity to Sao Tome and Principe
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, that’s a problem. Air connectivity is a problem. It’s essentially you’re connected to Angola, which itself is not very well connected, to Libreville in Gabon, which itself is not very well connected, or essentially to Lisbon. Like the real connecting point is Lisbon.
COSTA: And the flight to Lisbon, one of them, the Tap Portugal flight stops in Accra, but we noticed that, you know, when we stopped in Accra to come here, not many other people boarded the plane. So the majority of them are coming from Lisbon. And we keep asking people, you know, what is the next air link going to be? Nobody really has an answer. You know, we were hoping to maybe like hear about, you know, airlines coming here to kind of explore network expansion, but it doesn’t seem like any plans are in motion.
Sao Tome’s relationship with Portugal
LADISLAS MAURICE: I’d like to touch on sovereignty. This country feels like it’s a real country. In contrast, when you go to Caribbean countries, if they do or say something that the Brits don’t like or the Americans don’t like, immediately you’ve got the US Embassy breathing down their necks or the British High Commission, and then they’re forced to make changes. As we all know with everything that’s happening with the Caribbean citizenship by investment programs where, I mean, clearly they don’t really have any sovereignty. Here São Tomé has managed to come up with a citizenship by investment program. I mean, for which we’re licensed agents. Again, the world’s most affordable, $90,000 for a single person, $95,000 for a family of four. When you go around talking to people and you ask, you know, is Portugal very involved? Is Portugal breathing down your neck? Is Portugal telling you what to do? No. Like everyone is even surprised we asked this question. Everyone’s like, oh no, Portugal, no, they’re pretty cool, which is great. They are their own country. Yeah, in contrast to a lot of I mean, Francophone countries where France is just like…
COSTA: It seems much more like a relationship of cooperation than of control.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Absolutely. So real sovereignty, which I view as a huge positive. Again, unlike French Africa where the French really breathe down the necks of these Central African and West African countries, or even some Anglophone countries where there’s just a lot more British influence, American influence. I mean, there’s not even a British High Commission here. There is no US embassy. It’s one of the few countries in the world without a US embassy. It’s managed from I think from Angola.
COSTA: Angola, yeah.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, from Angola, used to be from Gabon, then they shifted to Angola. I guess they sent someone once in a while to do something. Like no one cares about this place. Which in today’s world of insanity and everyone getting involved in everyone else’s business, is a real positive. Ultimately, that’s what you want in a plan B. It’s especially as a Westerner, is the passport of a country that nobody cares about.
COSTA: Yeah, it’s very hard to imagine a world where having a São Toméan passport is going to be some kind of geopolitical liability.
Naturalizing as Santomean as a non-African
LADISLAS MAURICE: And it’s not strange to be non-African and São Toméan. We have come across quite a few expats that naturalized São Toméan. So, I mean, notably the French realtor Maxim, he became a citizen of São Tomé. We met some Italians and some Portuguese, etc. that got their citizenship. There’s also an Egyptian and a Lebanese and a Chinese minority on the island, I assume that they’re also getting their citizenship. So it’s not it’s not strange. And this is often a misperception that people have. They’re like, oh, what, you know, you’re going to have an African passport that’s not normal. Actually, it is. When you travel around Africa with an African passport, people aren’t particularly surprised. It’s…
COSTA: No, it’s not. It’s not really unique at all. I mean, there are probably tens of thousands of people in West Africa, if not more, who are, you know, not of African descent, and who are not local, who have the passport and obtained it through the normal naturalization pathways, which in a lot of these countries is about five years.
Who is applying for the Sao Tome and Principe Citizenship by Investment program?
LADISLAS MAURICE: So Costa:, your department is in charge of processing all our client’s applications, etc. What sort of clients do you have?
COSTA: I’d say that it’s extremely diverse. We really at the moment kind of have people from everywhere. We have Americans, we have Chinese people. We have stateless people from the Middle East. We have some German clients and also some Ukrainian clients. It’s really across the board and everybody has their own use case. There are certainly a lot of people that just want to keep it in their back pocket as a plan B passport. But there are also people, you know, for example, like I mentioned, stateless applicants, who are for the first time in their life, getting a travel document that can’t be taken away from them. This passport really is kind of what you make of it. And, you know, a few clients have spoken to me about wanting to dig their heels in a little bit more here. The place really, really does have that kind of potential, you know, you could come here and start an eco-lodge, you could buy real estate, you could start a restaurant. It really is an approachable place to actually live if that’s what you want out of your plan B. It doesn’t really seem, you know, like a place that will be overly complex to navigate, you know, for like, for example, Nigeria would be. It’s quite welcoming overall for the people that want the comprehensive plan B solution, i.e. passport plus real estate plus a semblance of community and life on the ground, it has those things.
LADISLAS MAURICE: São Tomé scores quite well on the corruption perception index. It is substantially better ranked than most other African countries. Like you say, it’s a country that you can navigate, do business in without coming across too many substantial issues. So that also makes a big difference.
COSTA: It ranks ahead of a number of EU candidate countries and I think even maybe some new entrance into the EU.
Capital controls in Sao Tome
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, the country also has problems. Clearly has a current account deficit. It has capital controls in place, you know, bringing money in is easy. Getting money out is not tremendously hard, but it can get a little… a little expensive if you need to convert the local currency into euros or dollars, the spreads are quite high because of demand. There’s a reason São Tomé is selling its citizenship. It’s not doing it out of altruism. It’s doing it because it’s trying to get forex and it’s trying to get funds for infrastructure development and it’s great. The CBI serves this very, very purpose and it will help the country a lot. The fact that the country has such a program says a lot about its openness to the world and how it wants to improve its own situation. We met quite a few expats here in São Tomé. And Costa, you were an expat in both Ghana and in Benin. By the way, Costa speaks French with a Beninois accent, which is pretty funny. And your Portuguese was very, very helpful. You’re speaking some Brazilian Portuguese around, it got us around. With the Prime Minister as well. So thank you, thank you Costa.
Sao Tome versus Francophone and Anglophone West Africa
LADISLAS MAURICE: How would you compare expat life in São Tomé versus expat life in Francophone Benin and in Anglophone Accra?
COSTA: I mean, the biggest distinction that comes to mind is it doesn’t really feel like the expat scene has critical mass at all. You know, you’d meet someone and then realize that you basically have met all of their friends already. They know every single person you’re talking about. As a consequence of that, you know, people are quite reserved. They’re kind of gossipy. They’re concerned about their reputation because, you know, there’s not really anywhere to run here. I think people just kind of want to approach things more delicately here. It’s not someplace where they can, you know, you can just like operate recklessly and expect your reputation not to proceed you. So that was kind of different. You know, you did sort of feel in Ghana, you know, there’s I mean, the expat scene there is super robust, it’s really tens of thousands of people from all over the world. It was very easy to blend in, it was very easy to just kind of like mind your own business. You know, you could be as involved as you wanted to be, whereas here, if you’re like, you know, the one European or the one American showing up, you know, for that given month, I mean, everybody’s gonna be like kind of looking at you like, oh, what is that guy doing? etc. There’s very much that kind of vibe.
Education and international schools in Sao Tome for expats
LADISLAS MAURICE: If you’re single, you might get a little bored. Options are limited. It’s a small country. If you’re with a family, there’s no international school, English international school. There is a Portuguese international school.
COSTA: Yeah.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Which is fine, you know, your kids can learn Portuguese. All good, it’s a useful language. It’s actually very useful.
COSTA: Yeah, Brazil, you know, Angola, there’s a million speakers there.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah. Those are big markets. If I had to choose between Ghana or here with a family, here absolutely, without a family, Ghana, absolutely.
COSTA: Yeah, you know, you can imagine being here, you know, it’s very easy to have a car. You never have to like wait to find parking, you just pull up anywhere on the side of the road, you never have to pay for it. Easy to imagine getting the kids in and out of the car. You know, there are nice expansive sidewalks everywhere. It would be, you know, a quiet life, but as a family, arguably quite pleasant. There are a lot of things to do on the weekend as far as recreation. You can go swimming, you can go snorkeling, you can go up in the, you know, in the hills, go to coffee plantations, cacao plantations. And I’m sure, you know, the longer you stay, you could develop a nice community with other expats living here as family.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah.
COSTA: As families.
LADISLAS MAURICE: And help is affordable as well, so that’s always, you know, that makes it easier as a family. I’d also touch on the like things are pretty relaxed here.
Car rentals and driving in Sao Tome
LADISLAS MAURICE: Uh I mean, we rented a car. I was never asked for a driver’s license.
COSTA: Yeah, it was the least amount of paperwork for a car rental I’ve ever seen.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Ever for a brand new car, too. I’ve come across like easy car renting, but for very dodgy cars.
COSTA: Yeah.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, it was in Mexico. I remember I was like I was worried about the thing falling apart. No questions asked, not even an ID. Here they did ask for a copy of the passport.
COSTA: Yeah, but just a phone number. No insurance, no driver’s license. I mean, 100 euro deposit on a brand new Jimmy.
LADISLAS MAURICE: The traffic police is not annoying. They’re not like again, in West Africa, in Ghana, in Ivory Coast, out to get you. They don’t bother you at all. They don’t even look at you. People, people don’t even use seatbelts.
COSTA: A lot of the police I’ve seen are unarmed, you know, because it’s just not that kind of place.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, it’s you can just do your thing here. It’s nice.
Mosquitos and malaria in Sao Tome
LADISLAS MAURICE: One big negative, mosquitoes.
COSTA: Huge.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah.
COSTA: A lot of people will say that, you know, the malaria here is under control. That said, I think people do sometimes get it. We talked to one guy who’d been living here for 12 years and he said he had it around three or four times. So that’s…
LADISLAS MAURICE: But he works on a vanilla farm.
COSTA: Yeah. So, but I I would have to say that I got bit by mosquitoes more than almost anywhere else I’ve been in Africa. At least inside a city.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Same here. I’m actually wondering if I should go to the pharmacy and get malaria tablets.
Healthcare in Sao Tome and Principe for foreigners
COSTA: While we’re on that topic, it’d be interesting to talk about health care. It’s not something that we dug into very much here. We did see a few hospitals that seem to be able to handle basic maladies, but it does seem that there is a culture of people with serious health problems who have the money, you know, going to Portugal or going to neighboring countries for more sophisticated treatment. If you’re living here as a family, you know, that could be a significant downside, especially if you’re here in some sort of circumstance where maybe there’s less air connectivity than usual, an energy crisis, for example, a war. So it’s something to think about. Medical care in Africa is always kind of a wild card.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, I wouldn’t feel very comfortable with health care here. I mean, I’ll say it straight up, it’s limited. They know it’s limited. This being said, it’s not a place where you’re going to have a lot of problems. It’s not again, like being in in West Africa where there’s a lot of traffic and the roads are insane and people drive crazy. People do not drive crazy here. I mean, there are barely any cars once you get out of like the capital city.
COSTA: Yeah.
LADISLAS MAURICE: And no one’s speeding like crazy. I think it’s quite hard and the roads, you know, circle a lot, so no one’s going too fast. It would be hard to get in a really bad car accident. You’d be, you’d have to be very, very unlucky. It would be a lot easier for you to have a bad car accident in Ghana, in Kenya, in Tanzania, Uganda, you know, name it, South Africa. I saw so many dead people in South Africa and car crashes and all that. Here, health care is bad, but you’re less likely to have a car accident.
COSTA: Yeah, I think if I was staying here, you know, we were only here a week, but if I was here long-term, I would certainly get a very substantial insurance policy for my family and I.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, emergency evacuation insurance for sure. Non-negotiable.
Nightlife in Sao Tome
LADISLAS MAURICE: Uh so we went out at night as well to do some prospecting for clients. So Costa, how’s that?
COSTA: Well, you quickly figure out that there are pretty much only three bars on any given night. It’s not Barcelona, I’ll put it that way. But, you know, I mean, you can go out, you can find some dancing, you can find some drinks. It’s exceedingly affordable. Like living in Africa is always, you know, really affordable, which is refreshing, you know, when you come from places like America, Asia, Western Europe, where it’s kind of gotten a little out of hand.
LADISLAS MAURICE: And again, like you go out at night, no one is harassing you, which is very pleasant.
COSTA: Yes, as we said before, the expat community is not huge. You’re gonna pretty much meet everyone within a few weeks of being here. You know, there’ll be some new Portuguese NGO worker showing up every once in a while, but, you know, they come and go. The community of people that are really sort of here for the long term, you could probably count it on a few hands. So it’s just something to keep in mind, you know, if you’re a younger person, if you’re looking for something a bit more dynamic, this might not be right for you. At least not yet.
Contact Costa: to apply for citizenship in Sao Tome and Principe
LADISLAS MAURICE: We’re licensed agents for the São Tomé citizenship by investment program, we can help you process your application from A to Z. There’s more information on the process below, that’s how you can contact us as well. And unlike most of our competitors, we do not charge any extra agency fees. So you will get the lowest price possible by going through The Wandering Investor.
COSTA: I will add that I personally help all of our clients prepare their applications and submit their applications. And I’m always happy to provide a free consultation on the program. You can use the link below to contact me directly on WhatsApp.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Make sure to download my free ebook, 12 Mistakes to Avoid when Investing in International Real Estate, which you can find on my website, link below, and feel free to follow me on Instagram @thewanderinginvestor. I look forward to hearing from you.
