From nearly 50 posts to 20 — for millions of Africans, a US visa just got harder to reach. The State Department plans to cut the number of US embassies and consulates in Africa that process visas from nearly 50 to just 20, according to three US officials and an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press. The change is expected in June and was approved under a directive signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week. On a conference call last Friday, US diplomats including consular chiefs were informed that visa services across Africa would be scaled back to 20 designated “hubs”.
The move is part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to limit both immigrant and non-immigrant visas and clamp down on travellers who enter on temporary visas and overstay them. Visa processing in Africa has already been squeezed by country-specific travel bans, a requirement for applicants to post bonds of up to $15,000, and, more recently, restrictions linked to the Ebola outbreak. The new rules compound all of that: citizens of non-hub countries will now have to travel — potentially across borders — to reach one of the 20 approved sites.
Consular sections in non-hub countries will remain open but with significantly limited services: passport renewals and emergency consular requests for American citizens, special national interest cases and diplomatic visa applications. Standard visa processing will stop.
The 20 hubs that survive the cut
The memo identifies the following 20 cities as the remaining visa-processing hubs across the continent:
Abidjan, Ivory Coast; Accra, Ghana; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Cape Town, South Africa; Dakar, Senegal; Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania; Djibouti, Djibouti; Johannesburg, South Africa; Kampala, Uganda; Kigali, Rwanda; Kinshasa, Congo; Lagos, Nigeria; Lome, Togo; Luanda, Angola; Malabo, Equatorial Guinea; Monrovia, Liberia; Nairobi, Kenya; Port Louis, Mauritius; Praia, Cape Verde; and Yaounde, Cameroon.
- Source: AP