Mali and Burkina Faso have announced their plan to apply reciprocal visa bans to citizens of the United States, weeks after President Donald Trump included the West African countries in an expanded travel ban list.
In separate letters shared late on Tuesday, both countries emphasised that the new measures were aimed at applying the same rules to Americans travelling to their countries as their citizens face when travelling to the US.
Together with Niger, which was also included in the list of new countries banned by the US in mid-December, Mali and Burkina Faso have recently sought to distance themselves from Western countries while working together in a new grouping known as the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).
All three countries are led by military leaders who have forged closer ties with Russia in recent years, while kicking out French and US soldiers previously stationed there.
In total, the new additions brought the total to 19 countries plus Palestine, the countries banned under Trump, who also introduced similar travel bans during his first presidency.
Mali has welcomed Russian forces, including about 1,500 personnel from the Wagner mercenary group and roughly 1,000 fighters from the Kremlin-controlled paramilitary group Africa Corps.
At a recent Sahel summit in Bamako, Mali, the three countries announced the launch of a joint military battalion aimed at fighting armed groups across the region.
However, they have struggled to improve the security situation at home amid rising attacks from separatist groups as well as armed groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).
Junta leader Doumbouya declared winner of Guinea’s presidential election
junta leader General Mamdi Doumbouya was declared the winner of Guinea’s presidential election according to incomplete results released late on Tuesday.
The vote is the first presidential election since the coup that ousted President Alpha Condé in 2021 and is widely seen as a means of legitimising Doumbouya’s stay in power.
Incomplete results announced on Tuesday, gave him 86.7 percent of votes counted so far.
“After centralizing, verifying, and compiling the provisional results of the first round of the presidential election on December 22, 2025, acting in strict compliance with the law, I hereby declare that Mr. Mamadi Doumbouya, candidate of the GMD, having obtained an absolute majority of the valid votes cast, is provisionally declared elected in the presidential election of December 28, 2025,” Djenabou Touré, of Guinea’s General Directorate of Elections, told reporters on Tuesday.
Doumbouya faced eight other candidates but the opposition has been weakened by a crackdown on dissent and the dissolution of more than 50 political parties.
Major opposition candidates were either barred from running or are in exile.
Yéro Baldé, a former education minister in Condé’s government, came a distant second with 6.5 percent of the votes.
The directorate said that 80.9 percent of the 6.7 million registered voters had cast their ballots.
The vote was held under a new constitution approved in a referendum in September. It revokes a ban on military leaders running for office and extends the presidential term from five years to seven.
Despite Guinea’s rich mineral resources — including as the world’s biggest exporter of bauxite, used to make aluminum — more than half of its 15 million people are experiencing record levels of poverty and food insecurity, according to the World Food Program
