It's astonishing there's no bare bones citizen by investment scheme in sub Saharan Africa. Given the corruption and access to Rwanda and Kenya it seems like an obvious easy money printer.
I'd live in Rwanda or Kenya over ~2/3rds of other countries. Certainly over anywhere in the Middle East, North Africa, the nation of South Africa, Central America, etc.
Everyone I know that's gone absolutely loves it, and every Kenyan I've worked with has been a lovely person.
There's a shitty "meme" that Africa is just a huge, hot version of Detroit or St. Louis or other Black American city. It's absolutely not, those classes of areas have remarkably different issues.
You could do a lot worse than Rwanda if you were fleeing Russia or the West Bank or something. Usually CBI are investment only in name, they're seen as a total loss.
Making corruption official is problematic. First off, making the practice official makes pricing a lot more transparent. If a country just outright says "no-questions-asked visas for $1000, citizenship for $10,000" then that also means the immigration control officer can't demand $2000 bribes to someone who can't meet the official immigration rules.
Furthermore, one of the advantages of widespread corruption is that everyone has to do it, which means everyone can be prosecuted for it. You could, say, require political candidates to pay million-dollar bribes, and then if those candidates actually get popular enough to threaten your power, prosecute them for bribing themselves onto the ballot. If everyone's a criminal, it doesn't mean the crime isn't a crime. It means you can strip people of their rights at any time without question.
If corruption were made official, this goes away. Someone who bought a golden visa or passport can't be prosecuted if the procedure for buying it was on the books and above-board - even if it's priced like some kind of "Sybil-resistant" anarchocapitalist cryptocurrency hellscape of humans-as-piles-of-money.
omneity|2 years ago
local_crmdgeon|2 years ago
Everyone I know that's gone absolutely loves it, and every Kenyan I've worked with has been a lovely person.
There's a shitty "meme" that Africa is just a huge, hot version of Detroit or St. Louis or other Black American city. It's absolutely not, those classes of areas have remarkably different issues.
salamanderss|2 years ago
kmeisthax|2 years ago
Furthermore, one of the advantages of widespread corruption is that everyone has to do it, which means everyone can be prosecuted for it. You could, say, require political candidates to pay million-dollar bribes, and then if those candidates actually get popular enough to threaten your power, prosecute them for bribing themselves onto the ballot. If everyone's a criminal, it doesn't mean the crime isn't a crime. It means you can strip people of their rights at any time without question.
If corruption were made official, this goes away. Someone who bought a golden visa or passport can't be prosecuted if the procedure for buying it was on the books and above-board - even if it's priced like some kind of "Sybil-resistant" anarchocapitalist cryptocurrency hellscape of humans-as-piles-of-money.