We called all of our new connections in the Ghanaian government and discovered that the President of South Africa had flown in for an urgent meeting, which took precedence over ours (what?!).

So we found ourselves walking around Accra in full suits, and nothing to do, unsure if we’d get another opportunity to meet the Minister.

An hour later, we got a call.

“Be in front of the Parliament building in 20 minutes. You are meeting with the Vice President.”

We jogged there and waited.

A few minutes later, we heard the sirens --

The motorcade was on the way.

We got picked up by the Presidential Motorcade, and sped to the Jubilee House (Ghana’s White House), swerving around cars that were slow to get out of our way.

When we got out of the sedan, we were still processing what had just happened and what was to come.

The Secret Service brought us into the building, and we waited in a clean, white room.

Eventually we were brought up to Vice President Bawumia’s office.

I can’t share much about our conversation with the Vice President, but he was enthusiastic about the benefits that charter cities could bring to Ghana, and about our plan.

After finding a site, meeting with developers, local community leaders, the relevant regulators, and potential partners in other financial centers (Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Nairobi, Dar, etc.), we flew back to the US.

We raised a small round from @patrissimo, @tylercowen, @jwmares, @sbm367, @dfmerin and a few others to develop legislation that would enable the creation of a charter city in Ghana.

Then, COVID happened.

Ghana shut its borders in February, and we had no idea when we’d be allowed back in the country.

We had limited runway and hadn’t budgeted for a year-long delay in our timeline due to a global pandemic.

We weren’t sure what to do.

So we did what we thought made the most sense:

We booked a flight to Alaska.

We’d plan our next move from the mountains. But that’s a story for another day. http://bluebookcities.com