How To Get A Guinea 🇬🇳 Visa Online

Guinea was the hardest visa to get for me, out of the hat-trick on my 2023 Christmas List – Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone. They all border each other but to save time, I was flying in and out of the hat-trick on a fast trip which would also see me back in Senegal and The Gambia to really backpack them this time! Given that in 2016, I spent 10 days in Senegal and The Gambia WITHOUT a backpack, on a Money Supermarket Lost Luggage Challenge in the golden days.

I would also even have a freaky return to Tunisia (24 minutes in Carthage) for the first time since I backpacked there as my 100th country celebration way back in 2015. It felt like a lifetime ago, well it was 8 years. To top it all off, I’d also transit through Cape Verde Islands on this trip on Sal Island, one which I didn’t actually visit on my trip to Cape Vere in 2022. Before all that, I had the sweat of applying for a Guinea Visa online, and here is how to do it. It’s not that easy, believe me.

How To Get A Guinea Visa Online

First things first, you need to go to the official Guinea Visa website. This is the exact link –

https://www.paf.gov.gn/visa

It tells you there that Guinea has now introduced an electronic visa, also called an e-visa or an online visa to facilitate entry into its territory, on the west coast of Africa. The new service enables people to apply for a visa to Guinea from the comfort of their own home or office, it means you do not have to go to an Embassy any longer! That is good news! Please refer to the Guinea Online Visa Application guidelines here (again this is on the official site).

I had read online before my trip that certain nationalities can get a visa online. But it all depends on your nationality, I travel with two Northern Irish passports (one from UK, one from Ireland) and used my Irish one for this, which is allowed. Some nationalities may not be entitled to the visa online. Check if you are eligible for the online visa, then start your application. You will need an email address to be confirmed and then you log in.

Filling In The Online Visa for Guinea

This is not easy, it took me ages. I filled in every single part in detail as I didn’t want to risk not getting the visa. I was honest in every question including the correct hotel, arrival date, parents details and the hardest part – listing EVERY country I had been to in the last 3 years – this list in my case had over 40 countries on it! Crazy, when I realised how many countries I had been to since 2021, and it took me about 2 hours to fill in the online visa writing wise! Take your time. I did it on my laptop and made sure to save it after each part. I don’t really like these online visas and this is why I am very happy these days that I only do these things once. I will go to Guinea just once – get the visa, get in and see it and leave. Since COVID, this has been my main way of travel and I now hate doing repeats (even though I backpacked 10 countries in the last few months and only 3 of them were new!).

The online visa application comprises five pages (actually six!), each requiring various fields to be completed. On the first page, the place of application is requested. To prevent the transfer of the visa process to a local embassy or any other embassy, provide an address in West Africa, which does not necessarily need to be accurate. I supplied the address and phone number of a hotel in Guinea-Bissau where I wasn’t even staying – do not put your home address if it is not in Africa – I was told this through online groups on Facebook before I applied and it works. It seems acceptable to use the address of a hotel in Senegal or another West African country. On the third page, you are prompted to provide a hotel/host name. I provided the name of a hotel in Conakry, and it was accepted. The Hotel Du Golfe in Conakry. Later, I really stayed here so this was not fake news!

Adding Photos To The Online Visa Application For Guinea

The fourth page is the most challenging as it requires uploading mandatory and non-mandatory documents, each not exceeding 200 kilobytes. This was bloody annoying! The mandatory documents include the passport data page and an applicant photo, recommended to be 150×214 pixels. I had to take photos with my phone of blurred screenshots to get such as low amount of KB!! All my photos and screenshots were about 500 KB!! This was excruciatingly annoying. Sometimes they accepted the uploads, normally they didn’t. Although non-mandatory documents are not clearly defined, I uploaded MORE than I thought I needed and it took me hours to get them below 200 KB!

I uploaded an air return ticket (which was real), my actual Covid vaccination certificate, and my actual Yellow Fever vaccination certificate. Some other tourists have successfully provided the schedule of their overland travel to other West African countries, but I considered it somewhat risky to do that so I simply used the flights in and out. There had been some civil unrest in West Africa before my trip.

The fifth and final page includes payment information, requiring a payment of $82 US Dollars by credit card. I encountered difficulties with this page as the screen with the card details would not open and a few times crashed. After trying various solutions, I finally managed to pay. If you encounter a similar problem, it might be worth attempting the process on different laptops, phones or computers. Additionally, some other tourists, reported issues with the system not accepting their payment. While I didn’t face this problem, using multiple credit cards may prove successful. I used Mastercard, it’s also important to know that in Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone, Mastercard is often not accepted!

Finally, there’s also a “secret” page 6: After a successful payment, you might assume everything is in order and wait for the visa, only to realize it hasn’t arrived. This is because, from page 5, you must click on the payment, and another page (page 6 in the same window) opens, sending a Guinea Visa Summary Form to your email. At first, I overlooked this step and waited in vain for the visa. After entering page 6, the visa was approved within 3-4 days.

You get a first email saying the visa application has been lodged and you are playing a waiting game. That email looks like this. It contains a PDF of your application, which I downloaded, saved, opened and printed and I checked everything was correct on it. You don’t need to print this but I always like to travel with as many documents as they might need to back up my entry into the country so I took this application printed into Guinea with me. At this point, when you log in to your account on the Guinea Visa page, it lists that your application has been lodged but not yet approved. It is pending.

Note: The online application of eVisa does not entitle the visa. Your request can be accepted or rejected by the Authority and there will be no refund. The administrative costs incurred for the processing of your application. The amount paid is kept by the administration, even in cases where visas are denied.

Waiting On The Guinea Online Visa To Be Confirmed

Now you play the waiting game after you have received that first email with the PDF. My visa was finally approved the day BEFORE my flight into Guinea, what drama and what a sweat! What is even more crazy is that my Guinea Visa was approved and confirmed the same day as the explosion in Guinea Conakry! The confirmation email looks like this .

That email contains a PDF of the visa itself. I downloaded this, checked it, saved it and printed it twice. I was told to print it twice – one to hand in to immigration on arrival into the country. The second one to keep on you in case you are asked for it. The actual visa PDF looks like this.

As well as having that email confirmation, when you log in to your account on the Guinea Visa website, the application status will be listed as approved, as per below.

Once it was approved (on the Monday), I got ready for my trip, then on the Tuesday, I headed to the airport on my journey and it was a long and frustrating one. I flew from Warszawa Chopin Airport in Poland on Wizzair to Rome in Italy. That flight was on time and then I had 1 hour 45 minutes to make my connection from Rome in Italy to Carthage in Tunisia. However, that flight was then delayed by 8 hours which would have meant I missed the connection. I finally arrived in Carthage, two hours after my plane was meant to have left but they had held it for me and one other lady! We ran and it took us 24 minutes so fast to speed through Carthage airport and make it to our seats! Phew!

From there, we landed in Dakar before finally arriving in Guinea Conakry just before midnight. At that time, I actually had to waken the immigration lady up to get the visa. She was asleep in the immigration booth! The other queues at the airport were all for locals or those who already had their actual visas. Remember, this form is not the actual visa, it’s just the document to say they can issue you with a visa on arrival. I showed my visa forms, my passport and my hotel reservations to the lady after she woke up and she added my visa as a stcker to my passport. The actual visa looks like this and was a tourist visa for 30 days.

If anything is unclear, you can of course call into your nearest Guinea Embassy or email the support address – [email protected]

Good luck, I loved Guinea and I even described it as “The Northern Ireland of Africa!” I toured Kassa Island, the sights of Conakry (the week of the explosion), the nearby bars and some local food.