How to get a work visa

First, get yourself a contract with a company. The company will then write a letter of invitation in which they invite you to work in Angola and promise the Angolan Government that they will pay for your return flight. If you work in the development business, that will not be enough, you will also need an invitation from the ministry that is involved. Make sure that your company has an official stamp to stamp over the signature. Paper with just the company letterhead is not official enough, Angola loves stamps.

This sounds easy, but that is because I have not told you everything yet. The company invitation has to be authorized by the Angolan Ministry of Administration. And the Ministry of Administration only authorizes the invitation of the company after it has been notarized. Angolan notaries only notarize when you present the letter together with a copy of the registration of the company in Angola, mentioning the person signing the letter as director or partner. If the company is not registered in Angola, the letter has to be recognized by the Angolan embassy in the country where the company is registered. And that means a translation, see below.

In case you get an invitation from a ministry, be aware that the invitation has to be authorized by the Director of Human Resources before it can be authorized by the ministry of Administration. In the case of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Director of human resources only takes orders from the secretary general. So your contact in the ministry has to humbly request the secretary general to authorize the authorization of your invitation so that it can be authorized by the ministry of Administration (are you still with me?).

These invitations have to be submitted to the Angolan Embassy in your country, together with other documents such as your CV, your contract, a declaration of good conduct and a declaration that you are healthy and more specifically do not suffer from any contagious diseases. All these documents have to be translated in Portuguese, the official language of Angola, by a registered translator. The translations have to be notarized by the district court where the translator is registered, the notarization of the district court has to be recognized by the Ministry of justice of your country and the recognition of the Ministry of Justice has to be authorized by the ministry of Foreign Affairs of your country. Most of these institutions are open to the public from 9 to 12 and are at least three hours travel from each other, so count at least a day for each step.

Now, if you are have already visited Angola, even if only for a week, perhaps to get those invitations for example, you might be very unlucky. Because the Angolan Embassy in your country might insist on a declaration of good conduct from the Angolan Ministry of Justice, which you probably forgot to get while you were busy getting the authorization to get your invitation authorized for authorization.

When you got all the documents, managed to persuade the embassy not to insist on the declaration of good conduct from the Angolan ministry of Justice and have parted with a fairly substantial amount of money, you will receive a sealed envelope that you have to hand in to the Ministry of Strangers and Migration In Luanda. The embassy will stress several times that you are not allowed to open the letter. It is very important that the letter arrives sealed in Luanda.

When you arrive in Luanda, you go to the ministry of strangers and migration, to container 6 to be precise. You see, the building where the migration services were housed is being repaired they are working temporarily for a fairly long time in containers. The envelope will be ripped open and the civil servant will then hand it back to you telling you to make three photocopies of the official letter by the embassy that politely requests the minister to process your application and come back. Once you have done that, you receive the original back with a stamp and the assurance that your work visa will be ready in eight days. Don’t hold your breath, I am now waiting for over thirty days and the average seems to be 90 days.