ABIDJAN — There’s a “Visa Navigator” on the website of the German Embassy in Ivory Coast. It’s supposed to help guide applicants through the maze of the German Residence Visa Application process. The first step? Answer three simple questions: Do you want to stay in Germany for more than 90 days? What’s your nationality? Why do you want to go to Germany?
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Three questions that are actually not too difficult to answer. But that’s just the tip of a red tape iceberg: Jean Abbé says the paperwork nearly broke his spirit.
Abbé, 30, wants to go to Germany as a migrant worker, and he wants to do it the legal way — unlike many of his compatriots, whose route to Europe goes through Tunisia and the central Mediterranean. They aren’t to blame: More than 20,000 Ivorians applied for asylum in the European Union in 2023, but they have very little chance of being granted protection status.
If they make it to Europe, most of them are not deported anyway, because the Ivorian government very rarely agrees to take back its own citizens.
The German government actually had an idea. If people are not fleeing war and persecution, but dreaming of economic advancement, and if Germany is simultaneously looking for workers, couldn’t other paths be opened up for them? Couldn’t we create a win-win situation?
“We will reduce irregular migration and enable regular migration,” the traffic light parties — the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and Alliance 90/The Greens — announced in their coalition agreement, which was formalized in December 2021 and fell apart in November 2024.
But has it worked? Is it any easier to immigrate to Germany legally today?
Abbé, for example, wants to train as an electronics technician. One Sunday in February 2024, he’s sitting at a table in Cool Zone, an ice cream parlor in Abobo, a poorer neighborhood in Abidjan, the largest city in Ivory Coast.
Outside, the sun is beating down, honking cars filled with football fans drive by, and the Africa Cup of Nations anthem plays on the TV. Ivory Coast is in the final match, and the game is set to take place in Abidjan in just 10 hours. The country is buzzing with excitement, but Abbé? He feels like he shouldn’t even be here anymore. He talks about it in French, even though he has already set his cell phone to German and signs WhatsApp messages with “Johannes Abbe.”
Abbé describes his life story: high school diploma, training as a computer scientist and finally an internship. “Then the problems began.” He couldn’t find a job, he says, like many young Ivorians. Only an informal job as a math teacher in the neighborhood.
And what about Germany? According to the German government, the country needs 400,000 skilled workers from abroad every year. A survey by the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce showed that half of all companies couldn’t fill their apprenticeship spots, and a third hadn’t received a single application. Wouldn’t it make sense to recruit apprentices from abroad?
The German dream
When Abbé talks about why he wants to go to Germany, he mentions his uncle, who lives 5,000 kilometers away in Düren, near Cologne. His uncle tried to bring him to Germany back in 2016. Abbé had even been accepted into the University of Essen to study mathematics, but he didn’t realize he needed to bring the confirmation letter from the university to his interview at the embassy. When he tried to submit it later, it was too late. His application was rejected. Submitting it later: not possible. Application: rejected.
Then came his second attempt. Because his internship is not recognized in Germany, he wants to do another one. The visa navigator lists what you need for this: a training contract — and basic language skills.
“Hello everyone,” Abbé says in German. “My name is Johannes.” He is standing in a classroom at the Goethe-Institut in Abidjan, attending an intensive German course. He and two classmates are presenting a group project where they create imaginary citizens’ initiatives. Abbé and his team came up with the “Citizens’ Initiative to Help Children.”
Germany wants skilled workers, not unskilled laborers.
“We want to help disadvantaged children to smile again… by giving them a roof, food and a good education,” says his classmate. Abbé says: “We declare that it is free.” And then: “We are done.”
Question time. A classmate wants to know why they don’t take money.
“We already have a lot of money.”
Another wants to know why they wanted to help the children.
Abbé: “This is very important for us.” Everyone giggles.
The Goethe-Institut is located in Cocody, a wealthy area with hotels, embassies, a golf course and good restaurants. Abbé commutes there every day for his intensive German course. The journey takes two to three hours in minibuses. The course costs him about 300 euros, which is equivalent to one and a half months of an average Ivorian’s salary.
But that’s the rule: If you want to work in Germany, you have to speak some German.
There are exceptions, like for countries in the Western Balkans, or the Opportunity Card introduced by the coalition government, which allows people to come to Germany to look for a job, even if they only speak English — but only if they have a university degree or specialized training.
The coalition didn’t change the long-standing principle: Germany wants skilled workers, not unskilled laborers. You might think this is hypocritical, considering the shortage of unskilled workers in the economy, and how many of them arrive as asylum seekers. But you could also argue that it’s within a country’s right to choose who it lets in. The problem, though, is that not enough people actually want to come. In the first four months, only 3,500 applications were made for the Opportunity Card, whereas the federal government had hoped for three times as many.
A lot of patience
In Düren, man who’s supposed to train Abbé parks his pickup truck in front of an apartment building. He gets out, rings the doorbell, and heads upstairs to the second floor, where he owns an apartment.
Bernd Ohlemeyer, 62, sits down on the couch in the living room while three Ivorian trainees take a seat beside him. Oumar, the first trainee, says he studied German in Ivory Coast. Bazoumanan, the second, says the same. Martial, the third, says he’s actually an IT specialist.
Before the three of them moved here six months ago, Ohlemeyer says he installed new sinks and bought a washing machine, a dryer and a few other appliances. “I pre-financed it,” he says. “They’ll pay it all back themselves, bit by bit, so they can get by here. They don’t get anything for free. That’s my motto: encourage and challenge.”
Ohlemeyer owns an electrical engineering company. He once sat on the district council for the Christian CDU party and shares quotes from CDU leader Friedrich Merz on Facebook. He says he believes Germany should deport criminals. Yet he’s also proud of training people from 28 different countries, many of whom came as refugees back in 2015. But they were already in Germany when he started working with them; he’d never recruited anyone from abroad until now.
Ohlemeyer has been traveling to the Ivory Coast for years, he is married to an Ivorian woman, and supports agricultural projects there with his association “A Roof for Africa.” Ohlemeyer says he is bringing the Ivorians into his company out of idealism.
Let him travel to Germany! He’ll learn the language better there than in Ivory Coast.
He wanted to retire at 62 but still has enough work to keep the company going, including for the three new trainees who he took to a construction site in Frankfurt in their first few weeks. Laying cables, drilling holes, holding things in place. Ohlemeyer says he hopes that he can do something about the shortage of skilled workers in the long term.
His trainees show us around their shared apartment: the living room, a kitchenette and tiled floors. There are two bedrooms, each with a double bed. One of the beds is only half-occupied. That’s Abbé’s bed. He was supposed to join them, but something went wrong.
Anyone trying to immigrate to Germany needs a lot of patience. You can wait months just to get an appointment at the embassy. Then, processing your application can take months more. After that, the employment agency and the local immigration office also need to approve your status.
One bit of good news: starting Jan. 1, 2025, visa applications will be available online at all German diplomatic missions abroad. This should speed up appointments and reduce waiting times. Digitalizing the visa process is another major project of the traffic light coalition.
Good for Germany
For Abbé, however, there’s another obstacle. He barely failed his language test, although it’s unclear what “failing” means in this case. According to Ohlemeyer, the consul had previously told Abbé that as long as he scored 50 points or more, he’d get his visa. Abbé scored 66 points. But then the consul said it wasn’t enough and refused to discuss it further. “I was devastated,” says Abbé. He had already bought his plane ticket and packed his bags with Ivorian food.
The Foreign Office claims that “our visa offices often find that language skills have not been properly tested or are insufficiently proven and therefore fail to meet the required standards.” They didn’t comment on individual cases.
Ohlemeyer says he wrote a letter to the ambassador and even had a German studies professor from Abidjan, a family friend, plead on Abbé’s behalf. “He told them: Let him travel to Germany! He’ll learn the language better there than in Ivory Coast, where hardly anyone speaks German fluently.”
All for nothing. His application was rejected.
Abbé’s uncle sits in his living room armchair in Düren. He says: “That wasn’t nice of the consulate.” On the other hand, he wonders how Abbé could fail his language assessment after the expensive courses. “He’s probably too distracted by his church.”
Because of the football match, not many men came to church in Abidjan on that Sunday in February. But Abbé is there. From a German perspective, the church looks more like a youth center. An inconspicuous, low-rise building with a gate. Inside: neon lights, loud music, a band playing drums, keyboards and electric bass at the front, a priest singing, men and women in colorful clothes dancing euphorically, with ecstatic prayers in between. Every Sunday, Abbé goes to the Protestant service here, which lasts five hours, from noon to 5 p.m.
Abbé is also dancing. A little boy is running around him. It’s his six-year-old son. Abbé’s wife is on the stage and sings. Outside, his mother, the twin sister of Abbé’s uncle, says she would be grateful if her son were given the chance to emigrate. It would be great for him if he could get a good education. “And it would also be good for Germany.”
The mother says they all live together in a small apartment just around the corner: Jean with his wife and child, his father and his sister. Will Abbé send some money home if he ever gets to Germany? “First he should support his wife and son,” she says. “If there’s anything left for me then that’s nice, but that’s his decision.”
This is Germany?
Abbé admits it’s really hard to think about leaving his family behind. He figures he probably won’t have enough money to visit them until after his training is complete.
Summer 2024 brings another attempt. On May 30, the embassy writes to Abbé, requesting a “German certificate at level A2 or B1 or B2.” This actually sounds promising because Abbé scores 79 out of 100 points on his A2 exam — satisfactory. The intensive course pays off.
This time, he will finally be able to start his traineeship. If you ask Abbé how he feels, he texts on WhatsApp that he’s optimistic. If you ask Ohlemeyer, he says over the phone, “It’s just crazy.”
On Sept. 2, 2024, Ohlemeyer is sitting outside a bakery in Terminal 2 of Frankfurt Airport, reflecting on Abbé: “He lost a year of his life.” But now, it’s finally happening. Abbé and two other trainees have their visas. Ohlemeyer watches the arrivals board. Flight TU 744 is running an hour late.
When the plane lands at 2:30 p.m., another two hours go by, and the trainees are still nowhere to be seen. Did something go wrong? Just as most of the passengers have already trickled out, the three finally come trotting through the door. Three young Ivorians, each hauling two big suitcases.
At the vocational school Abbé’s name has been on the attendance list for an entire year.
They look completely exhausted. Ohlemeyer grins and says, “You’ll be in school tomorrow — you can sleep then.” He’s talking about the vocational school where Abbé’s name has been on the attendance list for an entire year. Every morning, Ohlemeyer says, the teachers would call out his name.
Abbé is eager to try out his German. He talks about his first impressions of Germany: “I see a lot of people. But not so many black people.” About his first time on a plane, where he found the noise overwhelming: “I’m really worried about my ears.” And about the endless wait at passport control: “There are only two people at the counter.” Welcome to a country in desperate need of workers.
They take the elevator down to the basement and wheel their luggage through the dimly lit parking garage. “This is Germany?” Abbé asks with a laugh.
Then they load the suitcases into the back of the pickup truck, climb in and drive off.
