DV lottery photo guide for applicants from Cameroon

Last year's photo cannot be used again

The photo must have been taken within the last 6 months. A file saved from a previous year's entry is older than that by definition, so reusing it fails the rule no matter how good the photo looks. The same applies to the file a cyber cafe kept on its computer from the last time you entered.

Take a new photo each cycle. It costs nothing if you shoot it yourself: a plain light wall, even daylight, no flash, someone holding the phone at your eye level, neutral expression, mouth closed, both eyes open and clearly visible. Then crop to an exact square.

One entry per person, and confirm the photo is yours

Submitting more than one entry for the same person disqualifies that person for the cycle. This happens by accident when a relative enters for you and you also enter for yourself, or when two different cyber cafes both submit. Decide who is entering before the window opens, and let only that one submission go in.

If someone submits for you, sit with them and confirm that the photo uploaded is actually yours and recent, that your name and date of birth are right, and that you leave with your own confirmation number written down. That number is the only way to check the result, and no one will contact you if you lose it.

The square crop and the file limits

The file must be exactly 600 x 600 pixels, square, under 240 KB, and in colour. Head height from chin to the top of the hair has to fall between 50 and 69 percent of the image height, which is the check people fail most often when they crop a rectangular print down to a square.

Nothing may be edited. Resizing and cropping are the only changes allowed, so no background replacement, no skin smoothing and no brightening. Your spouse and every unmarried child under 21 need their own photo on the same plain background, each taken within 6 months of the entry.

Frequently asked questions