Effective August 1, 2026, the U.S. Department of State is officializing a major consular overhaul that ends routine visa processing at 25 African diplomatic posts and centralizes immigrant and nonimmigrant visa operations into 20 designated regional hubs.
Impacted Closures and Affected Areas
While the local U.S. embassies and consulates will remain open to assist American citizens and provide emergency services, routine visa functions will entirely cease at the following 25 locations:
Abuja (Nigeria)
Antananarivo (Madagascar)
Asmara (Eritrea)
Bamako (Mali)
Banjul (Gambia)
Brazzaville (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)
Windhoek (Namibia)
The 20 Designated Regional Hubs
Visa applicants from the affected areas must now use one of 20 designated regional hubs for appointments and interviews:
West/Central Africa: Abidjan, Accra, Dakar, Lagos, Lomé, Monrovia, Yaoundé
East/Southern Africa & Islands: Addis Ababa, Cape Town, Dar es Salaam, Djibouti, Johannesburg, Kampala, Kigali, Kinshasa, Luanda, Malabo, Nairobi, Port Louis, Praia
Operational Directives
Objectives: The State Department intends to standardize, tighten, and secure visa screening across the continent.
Remaining Services: Non-hub locations will still handle diplomatic visas and specific, urgent national interest exceptions.