Digital Nomads: Africans from 30 countries could spend $871 million more to enter the US

Consider a Botswana-based tech consultant who travels to the United States once a year for a client meeting. She holds a B1/B2 visa, the standard route for short-term business travel. 

However, Botswana now sits on Washington’s visa bond list, placing a critical condition on her next visa application: before her visa is approved, she must deposit up to $15,000 with the US government. 

The money is refundable, eventually, but it sits frozen for the duration of her stay, earning nothing, while she still sorts visa fees, flight, and accommodation costs.

That financial burden is now spreading across the continent. 

On April 2, the US expanded its visa bond policy. Six more African countries—Mauritius, Lesotho, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Seychelles, and Tunisia—were added to the United States’ visa bond programme, joining 24 other African nations whose citizens must now pay thousands of dollars upfront before entering the US for short-term travel.

The visa bond requirement now applies to 50 countries globally, 30 of them in Africa, according to the US State Department. That means 60% of the nationalities subject to the US visa bond policy are African.

The policy affects travellers applying for B1/B2 visas, the category used for business trips, tourism, conferences, medical visits, and family travel. 

Under the rule, applicants from the affected countries are required to post a refundable bond of $5,000, $10,000, or $15,000 after their visa interview and before receiving approval.

For travellers from most of the 30 affected African countries, the restrictions compound further. B-class visas, consisting of B1, B2, and B1/B2 visas, are now issued as single-entry permits valid for as little as three months. Each new trip means a fresh application, a fresh interview, and potentially a fresh bond deposit. 

To secure the visa, applicants must file a Department of Homeland Security Form I-352 and deposit the bond amount with the US government. 

The money is refunded only if the traveller leaves the US within the authorised stay period, never uses the visa before expiry, or is denied entry at a US port after arrival.

The US State Department said the programme is designed to reduce visa overstays. In reality, it creates one of the steepest financial barriers to mobility facing African travellers today.

An analysis of the US Department of State visa issuance data shows that 522,721 people from the 30 affected African countries received B1/B2 visas between the 2022 and 2024 fiscal years. That translates to an annual average of about 174,240 travellers.

If every traveller from those affected countries is required to post the minimum $5,000 bond, Africans would collectively need to lock up an additional $871.2 million every year just to enter the US.

At the highest bond tier of $15,000, that figure climbs to $2.6 billion annually.

Those figures exclude visa fees, interview costs, document processing charges, travel expenses, and legal services that already make US travel among the most expensive visa processes globally.

A new financial wall around mobility

Several of the 30 affected African countries already carry some of the world’s weakest passports. 

Namibia, Lesotho, Cabo Verde, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Sao Tome and Principe, Togo, Malawi, Tanzania, The Gambia, Tunisia, Benin, Uganda, Mozambique, Senegal, Algeria, and Mauritania rank between 60 and 80 on the Henley Passport Index, which measures global passport strength using data from the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) travel database. 

Nigeria, ranked 90th, is one of the lowest-ranked passports in Africa. Ethiopia ranks even lower, according to the index. 

The visa bond system increases the financial barrier for passport holders, especially Nigerians, who are already among the most scrutinised travellers in the world.

For many applicants from countries such as Nigeria, Ethiopia, and even Mauritius, one of the continent’s wealthiest countries per capita, the bond exceeds annual income at minimum wage.

Nigeria, which recorded the largest volume of B1/B2 visa issuances among affected African countries, illustrates the scale of the policy. 

Between 2022 and 2024 fiscal years, Nigerians received 238,732 B1/B2 visas, nearly 46% of all visas issued to the 30 African countries combined, according to data from the US Department of State.

Ethiopia followed with 53,134 visas issued over the same period, while Algeria recorded 52,285.

Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Algeria accounted for more than 65% of all B-class visas issued to travellers from the affected African countries, according to the same data.

The data also shows how sharply demand for short-term US travel rebounded after the pandemic slowdown. 

Across the 30 countries, B1/B2 visa issuances jumped from 134,207 in fiscal 2022 to 207,462 in 2023. That number declined to 181,052 in 2024.

The B1/B2 category has become one of the most important mobility routes for Africa’s globally connected workforce. Founders use it for fundraising trips and accelerator programmes. Consultants use it for client meetings. 

Remote workers use it for company retreats and annual off-sites. Researchers, designers, engineers, and independent operators rely on it for conferences, training, and short-term work travel. 

For this class of African professionals and global tech workers, the new bond requirements raise the cost of that mobility. 

 The US says overstays are the problem

The US government has defended the programme as a necessary deterrent: a financial deposit gives travellers from high-overstay countries a stronger incentive to leave on time.

According to the US Department of Homeland Security’s 2024 Entry/Exit Overstay Report, Malawi recorded the highest B1/B2 overstay rate among affected African countries at 22.45%, followed by Djibouti at 19.78% and Togo at 16.11%, according to the latest report.

Nigeria, despite recording the largest number of overstays at 6,917 people, posted a lower overstay rate of 5.56%.

Yet, some of the newly added countries have relatively low overstay rates. Mauritius recorded 0.85%, Seychelles 0.81%, and Lesotho 0.3%, raising questions about how broadly the US intends to expand the programme beyond high-risk countries.

Several countries on the visa bond list also face a double whammy. First, the expansion comes as the US tightens entry rules across several African countries, including Nigeria, Senegal, and Botswana, after imposing new visa restrictions and processing suspensions on them in January. 

Second, countries such as Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Benin, The Gambia, Malawi, and Mauritania already face partial visa restrictions affecting business, tourism, and student travel.

For travellers from countries already facing tighter visa scrutiny, the bond adds to shrinking visa access, shorter validity periods, tougher interviews, and rising rejection risks.

For African professionals whose careers depend on crossing borders, the new visa bonds turn mobility into a capital requirement.

The US government says the money is refundable. But for many travellers, founders, consultants, researchers, and remote workers, thousands of dollars tied up in government deposits can mean cancelled trips, delayed opportunities, or a market that becomes too expensive to reach.