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Seven of the 12 countries on President Trump’s new list are on the continent, where some said the policy was discriminatory and would unfairly affect their future.
June 6, 2025, 5:02 a.m. ET
When Africans woke up to the news this week that seven of the 12 countries on President Trump’s new travel ban list were African nations, the response, for many, was a mix of resignation and anger.
Resignation because several African nations were previously banned during Mr. Trump’s first term, including Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.
Anger because they were unsure what African governments could do to get the ban lifted, if it would lead to family separations and how exactly each country landed on the list in the first place.
“I think it’s a discriminatory decision, a decision he’s taken out of racism,” Narciso Edjang, a 19-year-old medical student in Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, said of Mr. Trump’s announcement.
Equatorial Guinea is one of the seven African nations Mr. Trump targeted in the travel ban announced on Wednesday night. The others are Chad, the Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Libya, Somalia and Sudan. The ban goes into effect on Monday.
Mr. Edjang had hoped to one day study medicine in the United States, where, he said, training was much better than in Equatorial Guinea, a country that is rich in oil but mired in pervasive poverty and inequality.
