Visa for Mali:
Best option: 7500 ouguiyas (Mauritanian currency) at the Nouakchott Mali embassy. The process is really simple and quick: just bring pictures, the money, fill out the form, and in a couple of hours it will be ready for pick up.
Laissez passer for Mali: 10.000-15.000 CFA.
Laissez passer for Burkina Faso: 5000-10000 CFA.
Visa for Ghana:
Best option is 25000 CFA in Ouagadogou in three days, or 30000 CFA in one day in Abidjan.
Visas for 'the Entente' (Benin, Niger, Togo, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast)
In Madrid (Spain), at the Benin Consulate in Madrid, anybody can get a visa for the five Entente countries for 140 euros.
Visa for Togo:
Best option is in Aflau, at the border between Ghana and Togo, on the Eastern side of Lome. At this border crossing, visas for European are 10000 CFA and for Americans 15000 CFA.
Visa for Benin:
Best option is 60 Cedi ($15) in one day (pick up the next day) in Accra. In Abidjan you are asked for 35.000 CFA ($50), but you get it the same day. In Ouagadogou we were asked for 40.000 CFA and it had taken three days.
Visa for Gabon:
Best option is 35.000 CFA in one day in Abidjan.
Visa for Congo Brazzaville:
Best option is 50.000 CFA in three days in Abidjan. We were asked for 115.000 DFA for a same-day visa in Bamako (Mali).
Visa for Angola:
We got our Angola visa in Kinshasa!! Even if we do not reside in Congo, and do not have Congolese passports, we were able to overcome the strict residency requirement imposed by Angolan embassies, thank to a letter of support from our embassy in Kinshasa. In our case, we went to the Spanish embassy in Kinshasa and we found that the Spanish embassador was a really nice guy, who eagerly accepted to write a letter of support, asking the Angolan embassador to issue a visa for us, explaining we had done everything possible on our hand. Indeed, we had applied for the Angolan visa at the embassy in Spain, but Angolan visas expire 60 days after issuance. Therefore, although we paid the application fee in Madrid, we asked the Angolan embassy in Madrid not to stamp the visa: we knew it would expire before we made it to Angola (since 60 days is just not enough).
