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Ghana Wants to Sell Citizenship: What We Know Now · IMI Podcasts

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Ghana just wrote citizenship by investment into its national law for the first time.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: The entire plan to sell citizenship in this African country fits in a single sentence.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Here is everything IMI currently knows about Ghana's passport plans and everything nobody can tell you.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: IMI has read the full bill.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Section 39 of the Ghana Investment Promotion Authority Bill 2026 is under review, and in full it reads: The Ministry of the Interior shall, in consultation with the Authority and in accordance with the Constitution and any other applicable legislation, enact legislation relating to citizenship by investment.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: That is the whole clause.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: While no investment options, thresholds, process, or even a program exist yet, it tells a government ministry to go create one.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the structure has a quirk.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Designing any future program will fall to the Interior Ministry, with the newly created Ghana Investment Promotion Authority, or GIPA, in a consulting role.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: The bill itself was sponsored by the Finance Ministry, whose minister signed the accompanying memorandum.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: So the body that will write the citizenship rules is not the body the bill empowers to attract investors.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Two different ministries, two mandates, and so far no published plan for how they coordinate.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, none of this can happen until the bill becomes law, and it has not.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Parliament passed it on April 2, 2026, but the President has not signed it.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: As of early June, it was still awaiting assent.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: A passed bill is a promise, and a signed law is a deadline.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: The agency being replaced, the Ghana Investment Promotion Center, has already started preparing for the handover.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: At a board retreat that closed on May 26th, its chairman tied the institution's transformation to implementation once the President signs.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: On paper, the bill is the 2026 version, though it moved through committee as the 2025 bill, and citizenship is only a piece of it.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: The same bill repeals the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre Act of 2013, rebuilds the centre as GIPA, and scraps the blanket minimum capital requirement that facilitated foreign direct investment for over a decade.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: But this has survived.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Foreign-owned trading enterprises still face a US$500,000 cash equity requirement, down from US million US dollars under the old law.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: The moment the President signs the 2026 version of the bill, the clock starts on those citizenship rules.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to catch that the day it happens rather than weeks later, the IMI Daily newsletter covers program updates, thresholds, and law changes as they land.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Link is below or at IMIDaily.com slash newsletter.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: The idea of Ghana selling citizenship is not new.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: During the 2024 election, independent presidential candidate Nana Kwame Bediako campaigned on a plan to sell citizenship to one million investors of African descent at$50,000 each.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: But that proposal never became policy.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Section 39 moves the idea of a campaign manifesto and into investment legislation.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Stepping back, Ghana is joining a crowded waiting room of citizenship by investment programs.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: More than a dozen governments are on the proposed but unlaunched list, having floated citizenship by investment or CBI without ever opening a program.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: In Africa specifically, though, the model is no longer hypothetical.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Three programs are already running, and they are some of the cheapest on Earth.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Egypt is the oldest of them, selling citizenship since 2019 with a donation route that starts at US$250,000.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: It also has the highest investment thresholds of the African options and is the slowest to gain traction.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: The country approved just 36 citizenships in all of 2025, held back partly by new in-person verification rules that most rival programs do not impose.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sierra Leone is next launching its Go for Gold program in 2025.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: The standard fast-track route is a US$140,000 donation that delivers citizenship in roughly 90 days.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: The Heritage Route, which is almost 30% cheaper at US$100,000 and faster at 60 days, is reserved for applicants of African ancestry who can prove their link with a DNA test.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is the only program in the world where a DNA result unlocks a discount.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Then came Sautame and Principe in late 2025, a small island nation off the west coast of Africa, which launched at$90,000 plus a US$5,000 submission fee.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: That makes it the world's cheapest citizenship by investment and the first new program in three decades to price under US$100,000.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: We cover all of these in detail in a video we'll link at the end of this one.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: The regional angle is what makes Ghana worth watching.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Ghanaian citizenship carries free movement across the economic community of West African states, or ECOWAS, a block of West African nations.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: So if Ghana follows through, a buyer would get more than a Ghanaian passport.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: They would get mobility across the whole region.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: So where does that leave us?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Ghana has written citizenship by investment into a bill.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: The Interior Ministry has been told to design it.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: But everything else is still missing.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you would rather look at African citizenship, you can act on today, we put together a video on the three aforementioned emerging market citizenships in Africa you can buy for at least$90,000.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Watch that one next and subscribe so you don't miss more analysis like this.