Washington narrows Africa’s Visa access

The U.S. State Department is preparing to reduce visa-processing services across Africa, cutting the number of U.S. embassies and consulates that handle visa applications from nearly 50 to 20, the Associated Press reported. The change is expected to take effect in June, though no final date has been set.

The move is part of the Trump administration’s broader push to tighten immigration controls, including closer scrutiny of both immigrant and temporary visa applicants. U.S. diplomats and consular officials were informed during a call last Friday that visa services in Africa would be scaled back. The directive, approved by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, designates 20 locations as regional processing hubs while limiting consular operations elsewhere.

Applicants from countries that do not have a visa-processing center would need to travel to an approved location.

This policy follows a radical restructuring of Africa’s relations with the United States since Trump returned to office. His stance toward Africa has changed drastically. Since he began his second term in January 2025, U.S. policy toward Africa has shifted noticeably away from long-standing multilateral engagement. The new approach has been driven by the Trump administration’s obsessive push for an “America First” framework built around transactional diplomacy, migration control, and access to Africa’s strategic resources. Instead of prioritizing broad aid programs, democracy promotion, and human-rights conditions, Washington has increasingly treated African partnerships through a transactional lens, where support is tied more directly to U.S. political, economic, and security interests.

Last month, Ambassador Troy Fitrell, Senior Bureau Official Bureau of African Affairs said the administration was moving from an “assistance-led paradigm” to an “investment-led strategy,” adding that the U.S. no longer sees Africa as needing “handouts” but as a “capable commercial partner.”

One of the clearest changes has been the reduction and restructuring of U.S. foreign assistance. The administration launched a broad review of aid programs, suspended many payments, eliminated USAID’s role, and cancelled thousands of grants and contracts. These decisions disrupted programs across the continent, particularly in public health, food security, refugee support, HIV/AIDS treatment, malaria prevention, and civil-society work. As a result, many African countries that had relied on U.S.-funded development and health initiatives faced uncertainty, funding gaps, and weakened service delivery.

In replacing these programs, the administration has shifted toward bilateral engagement, working directly with individual countries. This shift has become especially clear in its recent push for “America first global health,” across the continent. A number of African countries have signed such agreements, though they remain controversial. Kenya is among the countries that have signed a deal. It also recently entered into an agreement with Washington under which American citizens exposed to Ebola would be quarantined in Kenya. The deal has caused major uproar in the country, resulting in protests.

At the same time, the administration recast U.S.-Africa relations around trade and critical minerals. Washington has been attempting to us expend U.S. commercial access and securing strategic supply chains. This was especially visible in Washington’s engagement with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. U.S. diplomacy in the DRC-Rwanda conflict combined ‘peace efforts” with economic priorities, particularly access to mining opportunities, strategic minerals, and regional transport corridors.

The administration also adopted a more protectionist trade posture and a tougher migration policy. New tariff measures weakened the value of preferential trade arrangements such as AGOA, with analysts warning that higher duties could reduce the benefits African exporters previously enjoyed under duty-free access. On migration, the White House revived and expanded travel restrictions affecting several African countries. These measures included full or partial entry limits on states such as Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Togo, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and South Sudan.

The latest decision to curb visa-processing hubs is part of this radical shift in American foreign policy toward the continent.