Why Is the State Department Slashing Visa Processing Across Africa?

 The State Department published on 15 July 2026 an announcement titled "Realignment of U.S. Visa Services in Africa to Regional Hubs."

Effective August 1, the Department of State ended routine visa services at the following 25 US embassies and consulates in Sub-Saharan Africa: Antananarivo (Madagascar), Abuja (Nigeria), Asmara (Eritrea), Bamako (Mali), Banjul (The Gambia), Brazzaville (Republic of Congo), Bujumbura (Burundi), Conakry (Guinea), Cotonou (Benin), Durban (South Africa), Freetown (Sierra Leone), Gaborone (Botswana), Harare (Zimbabwe), Juba (South Sudan), Libreville (Gabon), Lilongwe (Malawi), Lusaka (Zambia), Maputo (Mozambique), Maseru (Lesotho), Mbabane (Eswatini), N'Djamena (Chad), Niamey (Niger), Nouakchott (Mauritania), Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), and Windhoek (Namibia). 

Instead, persons seeking visas to visit the United States in the countries cited above will have to travel to a regional visa hub in one of the following 20 cities: Abidjan (Cote d'Ivoire), 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 (DRC), Lagos (Nigeria), Lome (Togo), Luanda (Angola), Malabo (Equatorial Guinea), Monrovia (Liberia), Nairobi (Kenya), Port Louis (Mauritius), Praia (Cape Verde), and Yaoundé (Cameroon).

The Department of State said it is realigning visa operations in Sub-Saharan Africa as "part of a long-standing Department practice that strengthens national security by promoting more uniform screening, vetting, and adjudication standards, as well as improves efficiency."  

Comment:  The national security explanation is not convincing.  For example, a consular officer located in Lusaka can adjudicate a visa application just as uniformly and accurately as one at a visa hub in Johannesburg.  In fact, a consular officer located in the country of application has a better understanding of the applicant's background than a consular officer in another country.  Nor is the realignment likely to save much money.  US embassies and consulates are still expected to provide routine passport and protection services for American citizens.  The consular sections in most embassies and consulates in Africa are small with one individual often handling both visa services and assistance to American citizens.  

What the realignment will do is make it more difficult for many Africans to visit relatives in the United States, study at American universities, and travel for tourism and business.  The geography of the realignment means, for example, that the entire Sahel region and all of southern Africa except South Africa and Angola will no longer have local non-immigrant and immigrant visa services provided by US embassies and consulates.  This raises the question.  Is the real reason for this realignment to make it more difficult for Sub-Saharan Africans to come to the United States?  Whatever the rationale, the State Department has just handed another victory to China and Russia.  

 

Tardy Evacuation of Americans from Sudan

 The New York Times published on 28 April 2023 an article titled "U.S. Begins Overland Evacuation of American Civilians from Sudan" by Declan Walsh, Eric  Schmitt, Edward Wong, and Abdi Latif Dahir.

After a fast and professional evacuation using Chinook helicopters and special forces personnel of American diplomats from the U.S. embassy compound in Khartoum, the U.S. has belatedly begun to organize an evacuation by road for other Americans more than 500 miles away to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.  This follows by almost a week evacuations by air from an airfield north of Khartoum and by road to Port Sudan conducted by France, Germany, and the United Kingdom among others.  

The State Department issued on 29 April 2023 a statement titled "Evacuation Efforts of U.S. Citizens from Sudan."  It identifies what the U.S. government is doing to evacuate private citizens from Sudan.

Comment:  While U.S. policy normally does not include mass evacuations of U.S. citizens from conflict zones, the situation in Sudan would seem to qualify as an exception as was the case for evacuation of Americans from Afghanistan.  

China, the Mediterranean, and the Red Sea

China MED posted on 15 April 2018 a report titled "China Looks at the Mediterranean Region."

The report looks at China's growing concern with the protection of its nationals and interests in the Mediterranean, Middle East, Gulf States, and Red Sea regions. Release in China of the movie "Operation Red Sea" and the 10 March attack on Sinohydro workers in Mali have fueled this concern.

Protecting American Interests in Africa

This is a paper I delivered in Beijing on 9 March 2017 at a conference titled US-China-Africa: Practices and Cooperation in Protecting Overseas Interests hosted by the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations and sponsored by the Ford Foundation. My paper looks at the protection of US nationals and interests in Africa.