No passport for sale, but a real route.

Cape Verde citizenship by investment: the current position

Cabo Verde occupies an unusual position in the investment migration market. It appears on almost every list of African citizenship by investment options, and it is described by some advisers as running a programme. It does not, in the sense the market normally means. There is no citizenship by investment unit, no gazetted contribution schedule, no application form and no processing service standard.

What exists instead is two distinct things that are frequently conflated, and the conflation is where clients get hurt.

The first is a residency route. Cabo Verde grants permanent residence to foreign nationals who purchase qualifying property above a threshold, with the threshold set by the per capita GDP of the municipality where the property sits. This is real, it is administered, it processes in weeks rather than months, and it leads to naturalisation eligibility after five years. It is the route that will apply to almost every client reading this page.

The second is a provision in the nationality law. The 2023 Nationality Act contains a mechanism permitting acquisition of Cabo Verdean nationality through qualifying investment without following the standard residence pathway, and reporting indicates the five-year residence requirement can be waived in the case of substantial investment towards the development of the country. This is a discretionary ministerial or Council of Ministers power, not a programme. Industry discussion commonly references productive investment participation from around €200,000, but no standardised public pricing appears to be operational.indicative figure from industry discussion, not an official schedule

The distinction matters commercially. If you are told you can buy a Cabo Verdean passport for a fixed sum on a fixed timeline, that is a claim about the second route, and the second route does not work that way. If you are told you can obtain permanent residence for €80,000 and apply for citizenship five years later, that is a claim about the first route, and it is broadly accurate.

Cabo Verde is worth taking seriously for a specific type of client. It is a stable multi-party democracy, consistently among the better-governed states in Africa, Portuguese-speaking, in the Atlantic between Europe, Africa and the Americas, and it sits inside two mobility blocs that most advisers never mention. Those blocs, ECOWAS and the CPLP, are covered later on this page and are frequently the real value in the transaction.

Article 14 of the 2023 Nationality Act

Cabo Verde reformed its nationality law in 2023, and the reform is the source of most of the confusion in the market.

Three changes matter.

Investment-linked acquisition was introduced

The 2023 Act explicitly permits acquisition of nationality through investment-linked mechanisms. The law empowers government to grant citizenship to qualifying investors based on individual merits and contributions, rather than against a standardised checklist. Reporting on the qualifying categories indicates a catch-all provision covering other investments relevant to Cabo Verde, or firm commitments to make such investments, as qualified by a Resolution of the Council of Ministers.

That drafting tells you what kind of instrument this is. A programme is designed to process volume against fixed criteria. A discretionary power is designed to accommodate a small number of significant investors on bespoke terms. Cabo Verde has built the second and the market has described it as the first.

The residence requirement was tightened

Until 2023, the residence requirement for ordinary naturalisation was habitual rather than legal residence, which made it one of the most generous naturalisation regimes on the continent and attracted domestic criticism. The 2023 Act addressed this. For anyone planning a five-year path, this is the single most important change, because it means the clock runs on lawful residence properly documented, not on presence.

A language requirement was introduced, but only for the investment route

Cabo Verde is the only Lusophone jurisdiction that does not require language proficiency for ordinary naturalisation. The 2023 Act introduced a language requirement restricted specifically to citizenship acquisition by investment.

This is counter-intuitive and it is almost never mentioned. The investment route, which most people assume is the path of least resistance, carries a linguistic burden the ordinary route does not. It is covered in its own section below because it changes the planning for most clients.

A further amendment in 2024 removed the provision granting citizenship of origin to children born in the territory who would otherwise be stateless. The change is not directly relevant to investors, but it signals a legislature actively revising its nationality framework, which is a reason to check the current text rather than rely on any summary, including this one.

Why this is not a citizenship by investment programme

The test we apply to any jurisdiction claiming a citizenship by investment offering is a short one. Can you name the price, the form, the unit and the timeline? If any of the four is missing, what exists is a policy or a power, not a programme.

None of this makes the route illegitimate. Discretionary economic naturalisation exists in a number of respectable jurisdictions, including several European states, and it is often the mechanism used for genuinely exceptional investors. What it means practically is that the route cannot be planned around. You cannot budget it, you cannot timeline it, and you cannot rely on a precedent set for someone else.

Our position is that Article 14 is a conversation to have after a substantial investment case already exists on its own commercial merits. It is not a reason to make the investment.

The residency route is the opposite. It has a threshold, a document list, a processing time and a defined outcome. That is what the rest of this guide concentrates on.

The 1992 precedent and why it still matters

Cabo Verde is not new to this. It was among the first states to introduce economic citizenship, with a status established in 1992 that fell short of full citizenship because it did not include access to political rights. That shortfall raised doubts about its constitutionality.

Two lessons carry forward.

The first concerns what an investor is actually acquiring. A nationality that excludes political rights is not the same product as ordinary citizenship, and in some jurisdictions the distinction has knock-on consequences for transmission to children, for consular protection and for treatment by third states. Anyone considering the Article 14 route should establish, in writing, whether the status granted is ordinary nationality on the same footing as any other citizen, or a separate category. Reporting does not settle this, and the answer sits in the gazetted text.

The second concerns pace. A country that has already had one economic citizenship framework attract constitutional questions is likely to be deliberate about the second. That is consistent with what the 2023 Act actually does: it creates a discretionary power with a language requirement rather than a volume programme. Read against the history, the caution looks like design rather than delay.

For clients this is reassuring in one respect and limiting in another. Reassuring, because a jurisdiction that has not built a volume programme is far less likely to face the international scrutiny that has fallen on programmes elsewhere. Limiting, because there is no fast product to buy.

The investor residency route: what it actually is

This is the route that will apply to almost every client. It is commonly marketed as the Cabo Verde Green Card, though that is a market label rather than a statutory term.

The structure is straightforward. A foreign national purchases property in Cabo Verde above the applicable threshold, and is granted a permanent residence permit on that basis. The permit is renewed every five years, and renewal is conditional on continuing to own the qualifying property. There is no minimum stay requirement to maintain the permit.

What permanent residence does and does not give you

It gives you the right to reside in Cabo Verde indefinitely, subject to renewal, without an obligation to actually live there. It gives you a lawful status on which a naturalisation clock can eventually run. It does not give you a passport, it does not give you ECOWAS or CPLP travel rights, which attach to nationality rather than residence, and it does not by itself change your tax residence anywhere.

That last point is worth stressing because it is regularly mis-sold. A residence permit with no minimum stay requirement is not a tax residence. Tax residence in Cabo Verde, as in most jurisdictions, depends on presence and connecting factors, and a permit held by someone who never visits will not establish it. If the tax position is the objective, the plan has to involve actually being there.

The trade-off in the structure

The permit is tied to the property. Sell the property and the basis for renewal falls away. That couples your immigration status to a real estate position in a small island market with limited liquidity, and it means the exit decision on the property is also an immigration decision. Clients who treat the property as a pure entry ticket, to be disposed of once residence is granted, are misunderstanding the structure.

Investment thresholds: €80,000 and €120,000

Cabo Verde sets two thresholds, and which one applies depends on where the property sits.

The differential is a regional development mechanism. Cabo Verde's economy is concentrated on a small number of islands, with tourism weighted heavily towards Sal and Boa Vista and administration and services towards Santiago. The lower threshold is designed to direct capital towards the municipalities that receive less of it.

The practical consequence is that the cheaper entry point and the better-performing property market are usually not in the same place. A client optimising purely for the lowest qualifying outlay is, by construction, buying in a less economically active municipality. That may be exactly right for someone whose objective is the status rather than the asset, and it may be a poor decision for someone who expects the property to perform.

We would not choose the island on the basis of the threshold alone. The right sequence is to decide whether the property needs to work as an investment, and only then to look at which threshold applies where.

What the threshold does not include

The purchase price is the qualifying figure. Property transfer tax, notary and registration costs, legal fees, the residence application fees themselves, and any ongoing property charges sit on top. Modelled properly, a €80,000 qualifying purchase is not an €80,000 transaction. The ten-year model later on this page sets out the full picture.

Qualifying property and the fund transfer requirement

Eligible property types

Completed residential property and completed tourist property both qualify. Property under construction also qualifies, provided a valid construction contract is submitted with the application. Acquisition may be outright, or under a promise of purchase agreement, which is the Lusophone civil law instrument that binds both parties ahead of the definitive deed.

Off-plan and under-construction eligibility is the point at which most of the risk in this route concentrates. Buying a completed unit means you are assessing an asset that exists. Buying under construction means you are assessing a developer, a completion timeline and a title position, in a jurisdiction whose construction sector is small and where recourse is a local court process conducted in Portuguese.

We would apply the same discipline here that we apply to any development-linked residency route: independent title verification, developer track record on delivered projects rather than announced ones, an escrow or staged payment structure where available, and independent legal representation that is not introduced by the seller.

The fund transfer requirement

All funds used to purchase the qualifying property must be transferred from abroad through a Cabo Verdean licensed financial institution. This is not an administrative formality. It is the mechanism by which the source of funds is evidenced and by which the investment is recorded as foreign capital inflow, and it has three practical consequences.

First, the banking relationship must be opened and functioning before completion, and onboarding for a non-resident applicant takes time. Second, the money must be sent from an account in the applicant's own name, with a documented source, and structuring the transfer through third parties will create problems that are difficult to unwind. Third, cash and in-country payment do not qualify, which removes an entire category of informal transaction from consideration.

Build the banking timeline into the plan at the start. It is the most common cause of delay on routes structured this way.

Family inclusion

The main applicant can include a spouse and dependent children under a single qualifying investment. This is the standard structure and it is what makes the route economically sensible for a family, since the qualifying figure is not multiplied per person.

Two points require care.

The first is the definition of a dependent child. Age limits, the treatment of children in full-time education, and whether financial dependency must be evidenced all vary between jurisdictions and between the residency and the naturalisation stages. A child who qualifies as a dependant for the residence application may not still qualify five years later when the naturalisation application is made, and families with children in their late teens should model this explicitly rather than assume continuity.

The second is parents and adult children. Some routes admit dependent parents above a certain age; there is no clear published indication that this route does. Do not plan on the basis that a wider family group can be brought in later.

For the naturalisation stage, each family member's position is assessed against the residence and integration requirements individually. Inclusion on a residence application is not inclusion on a citizenship application.

From residency to citizenship: the five-year path

This is where the route becomes a citizenship conversation rather than a residence one, and it is where the marketing tends to get ahead of the law.

The stated position is that after five years of habitual residence, holders become eligible to apply for naturalisation. Naturalisation requires proof of habitual residence over the five-year period, good moral and civil fitness, financial self-sufficiency, and age of majority or emancipation under Cabo Verdean law.

Three cautions.

Habitual residence has to be proved

The permit carries no minimum stay requirement. Naturalisation requires proof of habitual residence. These are different tests, and a client who never visits Cabo Verde for five years is unlikely to be able to satisfy the second, however impeccably they satisfied the first.

This is the single most important sentence on this page for anyone whose objective is the passport rather than the residence. The no-minimum-stay feature is real, and it is a feature of the permit, not of the naturalisation path. The 2023 Act tightened the residence requirement precisely because habitual residence had previously been read generously. Plan on the basis that presence will need to be evidenced.

Eligibility is not entitlement

Naturalisation in Cabo Verde, as in most jurisdictions, is a decision rather than an automatic consequence of meeting criteria. Meeting the requirements makes you eligible to apply. It does not oblige the state to grant.

Processing is not fast

Reported processing at the naturalisation stage can extend beyond a year. The five-year figure is the eligibility clock, not the total time to passport. A realistic planning horizon from purchase to passport in hand is six to seven years, assuming presence is maintained and everything proceeds normally.

Set against that, the comparison with a Caribbean programme is not close on speed. It is a different product with a different purpose. What Cabo Verde offers is a low entry cost, a real asset, and a Lusophone position, in exchange for a long horizon and an actual connection to the country.

The language requirement, and why it applies only to the investment route

This is the detail almost every guide on this topic omits, and it inverts the usual assumption.

In most jurisdictions, the investment route exists partly to bypass integration requirements. In Cabo Verde the opposite has been legislated. Ordinary naturalisation carries no language requirement, which is unique in the Lusophone world and reflects a legal tradition inherited from Portuguese nationality law but adapted locally. The 2023 Act then introduced a language requirement specifically for citizenship acquisition by investment.

The policy logic is coherent. If nationality is being acquired through capital rather than through years of lived connection, the state substitutes a demonstrable integration test in place of the connection it would otherwise infer. It is arguably a more principled design than the reverse.

The planning consequence is significant.

In practical terms, Portuguese to a functional standard is achievable over a five-year horizon for a motivated adult, particularly for a client who already has Spanish or another Romance language. Cabo Verdean Creole is the language of daily life across the islands and is a distinct language rather than a dialect of Portuguese. For clients already working with our Lusophone desk on Brazil or Portugal, the language investment carries across all three jurisdictions, which changes the calculation considerably.

Dual nationality in Cabo Verde

Cabo Verde permits dual nationality, and naturalising does not require relinquishing an existing citizenship. This is consistent across the sources we have reviewed and is consistent with the country's emigration history: Cabo Verde has one of the largest diasporas relative to population in the world, and its policy has traditionally encouraged emigrants to integrate into host countries, including by acquiring those countries' citizenship. A state with that history has no reason to force renunciation.

We flag this specifically because the opposite claim circulates. At least one comparison resource states that Cabo Verdean citizenship requires renunciation of a prior nationality. That is not our reading of the position, and a client who accepted it at face value would rule out a route that is in fact open to them.

Two qualifications, as always.

The first is that your own nationality's rules are a separate question. Cabo Verde permitting dual nationality does nothing for a client whose current state does not. That analysis is run on the other side and is frequently the binding constraint.

The second is that legislative frameworks change. The 2023 Act was amended in 2024, and a jurisdiction actively revising its nationality law is one where the current position should be confirmed rather than assumed. We check this at the point of application on every file.

Cabo Verde passport power and visa-free access

If the objective is a passport that opens Europe, stop here. The Cabo Verde passport does not do that, and no route described on this page changes it.

Published counts cluster between 62 and 69 destinations combining visa-free and visa-on-arrival access, with global rankings between roughly 70th and 79th depending on the publisher and the counting method.counts vary by dataset and date A visa is required for the European Union and Schengen Area, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Those are the headline numbers, and taken alone they make Cabo Verde look weak. Taken alone they also miss the point, because the passport's value is not distributed the way a global count implies.

Where the strength actually sits

Cabo Verdean nationals travel visa-free throughout the Economic Community of West African States, a bloc of fifteen countries with free circulation protocols. Beyond ECOWAS, the passport carries access across a range of destinations including several in Asia, Southern Africa and Latin America.

Layered on top is the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, whose mobility framework applies across the Lusophone world. Those two blocs are covered in their own sections below, because between them they account for most of what a Cabo Verdean passport is actually worth, and neither is captured by a headline visa-free count.

The EU relationship

Cabo Verde maintains a Special Partnership with the European Union and a visa facilitation arrangement that eases the process for Cabo Verdean nationals without removing the visa requirement. This matters because it means the relationship with Europe is closer than the raw count suggests, and because it is the mechanism through which any future liberalisation would come. We would not advise a client to buy on the expectation of that liberalisation, but it is a live relationship rather than a static one.

Confirm current entry requirements with the destination authority before travelling. Mobility datasets lag policy changes.

ECOWAS free movement

Cabo Verde is a member of the Economic Community of West African States, and Cabo Verdean citizens travel visa-free within the bloc under the ECOWAS free circulation protocol. The bloc covers fifteen West African countries, among them Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Togo, the Gambia and Niger.

The protocol provides for free movement of persons, with rights of entry, residence and establishment phased across its implementation. In practice the entry and short-stay rights are the most consistently applied, and the residence and establishment rights vary in how they are administered between member states.

For most clients reading a citizenship page this is an abstraction. For a specific type of client it is the entire proposition.

One caution. Regional political developments in West Africa have affected the composition and cohesion of the bloc in recent years, and the practical value of free circulation depends on the protocol continuing to operate as designed. This is a live geopolitical variable rather than a settled feature, and it should be monitored rather than assumed for the duration of a five to seven year plan.

The CPLP layer: Lusophone mobility

The Community of Portuguese Language Countries brings together Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, Timor-Leste and Equatorial Guinea. Its mobility agreements establish preferential arrangements for the movement and residence of nationals of member states, and the framework has been progressively developed rather than static.CPLP mobility provisions are implemented differently by each member state; confirm the current position for the specific destination

What this means concretely varies by destination and by category of traveller, and the honest answer is that it is a preferential framework rather than a right of free movement equivalent to the European Union. It is not a back door to Portuguese residence, and any adviser presenting it as one is overselling.

What it does provide is a materially better starting position in the Lusophone world than a third-country national holds. Portugal's own immigration framework has historically contained provisions favourable to CPLP nationals, and Brazil's treatment of Portuguese-speaking nationals reflects the same relationship. The evidence of Cabo Verde's own inbound policy shows the pattern: nationals of Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique receive stays of up to 180 days on entry to Cabo Verde under CPLP mobility accords, against 90 days for ECOWAS neighbours and 30 days for most others.

Why this matters strategically

A client whose long-term plan involves Portugal or Brazil is usually approaching those markets as an outsider. A Cabo Verdean nationality repositions them inside the Lusophone community, with the language competence that the naturalisation path will have required in any event. That combination, a West African nationality, Lusophone standing, and functional Portuguese, is a genuinely differentiated position and it is not available at this price point anywhere else.

Our Brazil and Europe Lusophone desk works this axis routinely, and Cabo Verde slots into it more naturally than any other African option.

Where Cabo Verde sits in Africa

Africa's investment migration market is dominated by announcements. Botswana has legislated but not commenced. Ghana has mandated its Interior Ministry to draft legislation. Nigeria has a constitutional amendment bill at an early stage. Against that background, the relevant question is not which African programme is cheapest but which one you can actually use.

The governance position

Cabo Verde has sustained multi-party democracy since its transition in 1990, with repeated peaceful transfers of power between parties, and it ranks consistently among the strongest performers on the continent for governance, press freedom and political stability. It is a small state with a service-led economy, tourism-dependent and therefore exposed to external shocks, but institutionally solid in a way that matters for anyone acquiring a nationality intended to last decades.

The population is around 550,000 across ten volcanic islands, roughly 570 kilometres off the West African coast. The economy is concentrated in tourism, with agriculture and fishing contributing meaningfully. The scale is worth naming plainly: this is a very small country, its property market is thin, and its administrative capacity is proportionate to its size. Those are constraints, not disqualifications, but they should inform expectations on processing times and on liquidity.

LGP Programme Durability Rating: Cabo Verde

Our durability rating assesses how likely a route is to remain available, respected and useful over a ten-year horizon, independent of price and headline mobility.

The shape of that profile is close to the inverse of a Caribbean programme, and that is the useful way to read it.

The high external scrutiny score is the one most often overlooked. Programmes that sell citizenship at volume have attracted sustained international attention, and the resulting policy risk falls on holders as well as on governments. Cabo Verde has not built a volume programme. Its residency route is an immigration mechanism tied to a real asset, which is a category that has not attracted the same pressure. For a client whose concern is that their second citizenship remains uncontroversial in ten years, that asymmetry is worth real money.

The low speed score is the cost of that. There is no version of this route that produces a passport quickly.

Who this suits, and who it does not

This route works for

The West Africa operator. Doing business across ECOWAS, losing time and deals to visa friction. Nationality here is a commercial instrument.

The Lusophone planner. Already oriented towards Portugal or Brazil, willing to learn Portuguese, and interested in a position inside the CPLP rather than outside it.

The long-horizon diversifier. Not in a hurry, wants a second nationality that will still be uncontroversial in a decade, and prefers a route tied to an owned asset rather than a donation.

The client who wants an actual place. Cabo Verde is a functioning country with a climate, a coastline and a culture, and a client who intends to spend real time there is buying something with use value as well as option value.

This route does not work for

Anyone who needs Schengen or UK access. The passport does not provide it. The Caribbean or a European route is the conversation.

Anyone who needs a passport inside two years. The eligibility clock alone is five years.

Anyone who will never visit. The permit tolerates absence. Naturalisation requires habitual residence to be proved. These two facts together defeat the plan.

Anyone who wants the property to be a disposable entry ticket. Permit renewal is conditional on continuing to hold the qualifying property.

Anyone seeking a priced, processed citizenship product. That is what Article 14 is not.

We would rather lose the instruction than place a client on this route for the wrong objective. The failure mode is expensive: five years spent on a path that was never going to deliver what the client actually wanted, when an operational alternative existed on day one.

Ten-year cost model

We model over ten years because the headline threshold is the part clients see and the smaller part of what they pay. For Cabo Verde specifically, two cost lines are routinely omitted from comparisons: the cost of actually being present enough to satisfy habitual residence, and the cost of holding a property in a small island market.

The travel line deserves emphasis. A client establishing habitual residence over five years is making repeated trips to an Atlantic archipelago, and the cumulative cost of that is frequently larger than the transaction taxes. Model it honestly at the outset. It is the difference between a route that works and a plan that quietly fails at year five.

Against that, one line runs the other way. This is an asset purchase, not a donation. A Caribbean contribution is spent. A Cabo Verde property is owned, may generate rental income in a tourism economy, and retains a residual value. Whether it appreciates is a separate question and depends heavily on the island and the municipality, but the capital is not consumed. In a like-for-like ten-year comparison, that structural difference is material and is usually left out of headline price tables.

United States taxpayers

Acquiring foreign residence and later a second nationality does not alter United States tax obligations, which follow citizenship rather than residence. The Cabo Verdean bank account required for the fund transfer creates FBAR and FATCA reporting obligations from the moment it is opened. If the property is held through any pooled or corporate vehicle rather than directly, PFIC and controlled foreign corporation analysis is required before subscription rather than after. Rental income from the property is reportable, with foreign tax credit analysis against any Cabo Verdean tax. Clients contemplating expatriation at any point should understand the section 877A framework, including the mark-to-market regime and the covered expatriate tests, before taking steps that alter their position.

United Kingdom clients

UK residents should note that acquiring Cabo Verdean residence does not change UK tax residence, which is determined by the statutory residence test. A property generating rental income abroad is reportable, and the interaction with the UK's rules on foreign property income and any available relief should be modelled before purchase. Where the plan involves eventual relocation, the sequencing of departure relative to the naturalisation timeline is the part that requires advice.

Cabo Verde tax

Cabo Verde participates in international tax transparency and exchange-of-information frameworks. Any assumption about non-reporting should be verified on a current-jurisdiction basis and, frankly, should not form part of a plan at all. Tax exposure depends on residency status, source rules, structure and substance, and a residence permit without presence does not create Cabo Verdean tax residence.

Compared with the alternatives

Cabo Verde or São Tomé and Príncipe

These are the two African routes that work today, and they answer different questions. São Tomé delivers citizenship in months through a contribution, and Lincoln Global Partners is an accredited marketing agent for that programme under Licence No. STP-2025-8, so submissions go through the official channel. Cabo Verde delivers residence immediately and citizenship in six to seven years, tied to an owned asset, with stronger governance, a stronger passport and ECOWAS access.

If the client needs a nationality now, it is São Tomé. If the client is building a durable position and can wait, Cabo Verde is the better asset. There is a sensible case for doing both: São Tomé solves the immediate need, Cabo Verde runs in the background as the long-horizon position.

Cabo Verde or the Caribbean

Not substitutes. The Caribbean is bought for European and UK access at two to three times the price. Cabo Verde does not deliver that and never will. A client buying Cabo Verde for mobility has bought the wrong thing.

Cabo Verde or Portugal

The closest philosophical comparison, since both are Lusophone routes through investment to eventual citizenship. Portugal delivers EU citizenship and everything that follows from it, at a cost an order of magnitude higher and under a framework that has been repeatedly revised. Cabo Verde delivers a West African and Lusophone position at €80,000. For a client who genuinely wants Europe, Portugal is the answer and Cabo Verde is not a cheaper version of it.

Common questions on Cape Verde citizenship by investment

How Lincoln Global Partners advises on Cabo Verde

Our approach on Cabo Verde is shaped by the fact that the route is genuinely good for a narrow set of objectives and genuinely wrong for the ones most clients arrive with.

We qualify the objective first. If the answer involves European access or a passport inside two years, we say so in the first conversation and move to a route that delivers it. Cabo Verde does not get sold to a mobility brief.

We treat the property as an investment decision. Independent title verification, independent counsel not introduced by the seller, developer delivery record on completed projects, and staged payment structures where available. The threshold determines eligibility; it does not determine whether the asset is any good.

We model the presence requirement honestly. Before a client commits, we set out what habitual residence over five years will actually cost in trips, time and money. If they will not do it, the route does not work and we say so at the start rather than at year five.

We obtain local written opinions on the open questions. Specifically: whether naturalisation by a former investor-residence holder falls under the ordinary route or the investment route for language purposes, and whether nationality acquired under the investment provision carries full status parity. Neither is settled by marketing material.

We sequence with São Tomé where the need is immediate. An operational citizenship now and a durable position building in the background is frequently a better answer than either alone.

If Cabo Verde is on your list, the first question is not the threshold. It is what you want the nationality to do.