Mali and Burkina Faso announced they were imposing total visa bans on US citizens in retaliation for US President Donald Trump’s ban on US visas for their citizens this month.
The two West African countries, which are both governed by the military, on Tuesday became the latest African countries to impose “tit for tat” visa bans on the United States. These follow new visa restrictions imposed by Trump, which now apply to 39 countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. The White House said they were imposed for “national security” reasons.
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“In accordance with the principle of reciprocity, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation informs the national and international community that, with immediate effect, the government of the Republic of Mali will apply to American nationals the same conditions and requirements as those imposed on Malian citizens,” the Malian ministry said in a statement.
Burkina Faso’s Foreign Minister Karamoko Jean-Marie Traoré also cited in a separate statement a reciprocity rule for his country’s visa ban.
Which countries have banned visas for US citizens?
The US directive issued on December 16 extended the complete ban on US visas to citizens of five countries other than Mali and Burkina Faso: Laos, Niger, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Syria.
Travelers holding travel documents issued by the Palestinian Authority were also barred from entering the United States under the order.
The United States cited countries’ weak screening and monitoring capabilities, information-sharing policies, visa overstay rates, and refusal to take back its deported nationals for the ban.
Trump’s order also specifies that countries are further evaluated based on whether they have a “significant terrorist presence.”
The US ban takes effect on Thursday.
Mali, Burkina Faso and neighboring Niger have for years been plagued by violence from armed groups linked to Al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS). Violence in these countries has displaced millions of civilians.
Niger barred entry to US citizens on Friday, also citing the US ban on its citizens. The country is also ruled by the army like its neighbors Mali and Burkina Faso. All three formed the Alliance of Sahel States in July 2024 to address security concerns and improve trade relations.
In reciprocity, Chad stopped issuing visas to U.S. citizens on June 6, with the exception of U.S. officials. Only American citizens who obtained a visa before June 9 are now allowed to enter Chad.
The country was on an initial list of 12 countries whose citizens were banned from visas starting June 9 by the Trump administration.
Which countries are affected by US visa bans?
Citizens of 39 countries are now subject to full or partial entry restrictions into the United States, according to the American think tank Council on Foreign Relations.
Those totally prohibited are:
- Afghanistan
- Burkina Faso
- Chad
- Equatorial Guinea
- Eritrea
- Haiti
- Iran
- Laos
- Libya
- Mali
- Burma
- Niger
- Republic of Congo
- Sierra Leone
- Somalia
- South Sudan
- Sudan
- Syria
- Yemen
- Holders of travel documents issued by the Palestinian Authority are also completely barred.
Those partially restricted are:
- Angola
- Antigua and Barbuda
- Benign
- Burundi
- Cuba
- Dominic
- Gabon
- The Gambia
- Ivory Coast
- Malawi
- Mauritania
- Nigeria
- Senegal
- Tanzania
- Go
- Tonga
- Turkmenistan
- Venezuela
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
Is Trump specifically targeting African countries with visa bans?
Trump’s approach to Africa regarding entry visas during his second term as US president is similar to that of his first administration when he issued a “Muslim ban”, which affected citizens of three African countries – Somalia, Sudan and Libya – as well as Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
In later updates to the ban, Sudan was removed while Chad was added.
Most of the countries subject to U.S. entry restrictions since Trump took office on Jan. 20 are in Africa. Of the 39 affected countries, 26 are African nations.
How have US-Africa trade relations fared under Trump?
On the trade front, the United States abandoned its African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) preferential trade program and adopted a tariff-based regime that was also applied to most other countries around the world under Trump’s tariff policy.
Since 2000, AGOA has provided African countries with duty-free access to U.S. markets, boosting African exports to the United States of a wide range of products, from wine to cars.
AGOA has created approximately 300,000 jobs in African countries and indirectly supported an additional 1.2 million jobs, according to the U.S. Center for International Strategic Studies.
However, AGOA expired in September after the US Congress failed to renew it. Although the Trump administration has said it supports a one-year extension, no measures have been announced to revive the program.
Instead, African countries now face often high tariffs, which the United States sometimes justifies on political grounds.
South Africa, Africa’s richest country, for example, was hit with a 30% tariff after Trump refuted claims of “genocide” against the country’s white Afrikaner minority. The U.S. government has since prioritized the resettlement of Afrikaners as refugees in the United States.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa met with Trump at the White House in May and explained that crime in the country targets the population as a whole – not just its white citizens – but he failed to convince Trump.
The Trump administration is also prioritizing its access to critical rare earths, used to develop high-tech devices, in an effort to remain competitive with China, which mines about 60 percent of the world’s rare earths and processes 90 percent of it.
Trump took on a mediating role this year in the conflict between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and neighboring Rwanda, after the DRC government proposed a minerals deal with the United States. The United States and the United Nations accuse Rwanda of supporting a rebellion by the M23 armed group in eastern DRC.
Trump did not commit to military intervention in the DRC, but managed to reach a peace agreement between the two countries on December 4 after applying diplomatic pressure on Rwanda.
Attacks against civilians by the M23 nevertheless continued despite the peace agreement.
A clause in the deal gave U.S. companies priority access to the DRC and Rwanda’s mineral reserves, which include cobalt, copper, lithium and gold.
What about aid and security cooperation?
In early 2025, the Trump administration closed the U.S. Agency for International Development and cut billions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid, affecting many African countries that relied heavily on the world’s largest donor for health and humanitarian aid.
Humanitarian groups have since reported increasing hunger in northern Nigeria, Somalia and northeastern Kenya.
Health observers and analysts have also sounded the alarm about the risk of undoing work to prevent and contain the spread of HIV in Lesotho and South Africa.
In northern Cameroon, authorities have reported a rise in malaria deaths as drug supplies dwindle. This month, the United States unilaterally pledged $400 million in funding to the country for health over the next five years, on the condition that Cameroon increases its own annual health spending from $22 million to $450 million.
African countries were also hardest hit when Trump last week recalled 30 career diplomats appointed by former President Joe Biden from 29 countries.
Fifteen of them were stationed in African countries: Algeria, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Madagascar, Mauritius, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia and Uganda.
Meanwhile, the United States continued to intensify its strikes against armed groups linked to ISIL and Al-Qaeda, similar to those carried out during Trump’s first presidential term, from 2017 to 2021.
In Somalia, the United States launched strikes in September targeting al-Shabab and ISIS’s affiliate in Somalia province, according to the U.S.-based think tank the New America Foundation.
The United States also targeted groups linked to ISIL and al-Qaeda in northwest Nigeria for the first time on Thursday.
Even though these strikes were carried out in collaboration with the Nigerian government, a war of rhetoric prevailed between the two countries.
The United States claims to be “saving” Nigerian Christians, who it claims are suffering genocide.
Nigerian authorities, for their part, deny allegations of genocide and say people of all religions have been hit hard by armed groups operating in the country.
