By Mohammed Jallow
There is a certain irony in watching a nation whose history is inseparable from immigration increasingly build political walls against the very phenomenon that helped construct its economic, cultural and demographic strength. America has every sovereign right to determine who enters its territory, how its borders are protected and how its immigration laws are enforced. But Africa, and particularly The Gambia, must also have the intellectual courage to ask a profoundly uncomfortable question: when America says “America First,” why does Africa continue to behave as though Africa must always come last?
The latest American visa restrictions should therefore not be interpreted merely as another inconvenience for Gambians seeking to visit, study, trade, work or reunite with family in the United States. They should be understood as a strategic warning to the entire African continent.
The United States has progressively tightened immigration and visa policies under President Donald Trump. In January 2026, Washington partially suspended visa issuance for Gambian nationals covering B1/B2 visitor visas, F, M and J student and exchange visas, as well as immigrant visas, subject to specified exceptions. The U.S. administration has cited security, screening, information sharing and visa overstay concerns among its reasons.
And here is where the irony becomes particularly painful.
America is, fundamentally, a nation built by people who came from somewhere else.
The United States did not emerge from an isolated island of people who had always been there. Generations of immigrants crossed oceans, borders and continents to build businesses, cultivate farms, teach in universities, work in hospitals, manufacture goods, construct infrastructure, serve in the military and contribute to America’s extraordinary economic and technological ascent.
Today, immigrants constitute a huge component of American society. In 2023, the United States had approximately 51.8 million immigrants. Pew Research also reports that immigrants are represented substantially among highly educated populations, with immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa among the groups more likely than US born adults to hold bachelor’s degrees or higher.
So the question is not whether America has the right to regulate immigration. Of course it does.
The question is whether America should eventually discover that a country can become so obsessed with preventing people from entering that it inadvertently begins preventing talent, consumers, students, entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, workers and future citizens from contributing to its own prosperity.
Recent American immigration restrictions have already generated consequences beyond the border. Analysts have warned that restrictions affecting African migration can reverberate through international business, medicine, technology, trade, investment and entrepreneurship. African migrants are not merely people travelling from one geographical point to another; they are part of a transnational economic ecosystem linking households, companies, universities and markets on both sides of the Atlantic.
And this is precisely where Africa must stop looking at this issue exclusively through the eyes of someone waiting for a visa.
A visa restriction is not merely a travel restriction. It can become a trade restriction, an education restriction, a talent restriction, a family restriction, an investment restriction and eventually a relationship restriction.
When a Gambian entrepreneur cannot travel easily to meet an American business partner, both sides lose.
When a Gambian student cannot access an American university, the student loses, but so does the American institution that would have received tuition, research capacity and international talent.
When African professionals are prevented from moving freely, American hospitals, universities, technology companies, laboratories and other institutions can also lose access to skilled human capital.
When families are separated, the economic and emotional consequences do not stop at the airport.
And when African consumers, investors and entrepreneurs increasingly conclude that America is becoming inaccessible, they may simply begin looking elsewhere.
That should concern American policymakers.
Because history has demonstrated something remarkably simple: people follow opportunity.
If the United States makes itself progressively more difficult to access while Africa simultaneously becomes more economically integrated, technologically capable and commercially attractive, capital, talent and entrepreneurship will eventually search for alternative destinations.
America will not disappear because Africans are prevented from entering. But America should not assume that the rest of the world will remain permanently dependent upon American access either.
The most provocative question Africa should ask itself is therefore not, “How do we convince America to let us in?”
It should be:
“How do we build an Africa so prosperous that Americans will want to come here?”
That is the Pan African question.
For decades, African political discourse has concentrated on migration as though the African citizen’s highest economic aspiration must necessarily be leaving Africa. We celebrate the young person who reaches Europe or America while often failing to ask why that young person felt compelled to leave in the first place.
Perhaps the greatest indictment of African governance is not that our people want to travel.
It is that too many of our people believe their future must exist somewhere else.
That must change.
Across Africa, governments are increasingly speaking about industrialisation, local production, entrepreneurship, digital transformation, agricultural modernisation, intra African trade and youth employment. Some African leaders have explicitly encouraged their citizens to pursue opportunities at home rather than risk irregular migration abroad.
But speeches are not enough.
Young Africans will not remain because presidents tell them to remain. They will remain when Africa offers them dignity, competitive wages, functioning institutions, reliable electricity, quality education, access to capital, healthcare, housing, security and meaningful economic opportunity.
You cannot patriotically lecture a hungry young person into loving an economy that has no room for him.
The answer is therefore not to condemn Africans who want to migrate. The answer is to build countries worth staying in.
This is where the African Continental Free Trade Area becomes profoundly important. Africa must move beyond the colonial economic architecture in which raw materials leave Africa while finished products return at higher prices. We must build integrated African supply chains, common markets, regional infrastructure, digital commerce and investment corridors.
Imagine a West Africa where a Gambian technology entrepreneur can sell seamlessly into Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire.
Imagine a young Gambian engineer finding a career in a regional infrastructure company rather than believing that success requires a flight to America.
Imagine American universities establishing major research partnerships in Banjul, Accra, Dakar and Abuja.
Imagine American investors travelling to Africa because the opportunities here are too significant to ignore.
That is the Africa we should be building.
And The Gambia has a particular role to play.
Our country may be geographically small, but our strategic possibilities are considerably larger than our physical size. We sit within the West African economic ecosystem, possess a globally recognised diaspora, have access to the Atlantic, and enjoy relationships with countries across Europe, North America, Africa and beyond.
The Barrow Administration and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should therefore treat the current American visa restrictions as a diplomatic and development wakeup call rather than merely a consular problem.
The Foreign Ministry should urgently establish a high-level diplomatic engagement framework with Washington addressing the underlying concerns raised by the United States, including documentation, information sharing, identity management, migration cooperation and visa overstay concerns.
If Washington says there are deficiencies, Banjul should ask precisely what they are, what evidence supports them and what measurable reforms would address them.
Diplomacy should be intelligent, evidence based and reciprocal.
But the government should simultaneously pursue something much bigger: a national strategy for reducing the economic compulsion to migrate.
That means investing seriously in agriculture, tourism, digital enterprise, manufacturing, fisheries, vocational education, renewable energy, creative industries and small and medium sized enterprises.
It means transforming the diaspora from a source of remittances into a strategic investment constituency.
It means asking Gambians abroad not merely to send money home, but to bring technology, investment, professional networks, management expertise and international markets home.
And it means telling the next generation something different.
Not:
“Stay in The Gambia because America does not want you.”
But: “Build The Gambia because The Gambia needs you.”
There is another irony that should not be lost in this debate.
President Trump is not going to be president forever.
No president is.
Policies can survive administrations, however. Regulations can become institutionalised. Diplomatic relationships can deteriorate. Consular procedures can become more complicated. And restrictions introduced during one presidency can take years to unwind, particularly when they become embedded in bureaucratic systems and political expectations.
That is why Africa must not build its future around the assumption that any American president will always be friendly toward African migration.
Nor should Africa build its future around hostility toward America.
The mature position is strategic independence.
We should want excellent relations with Washington without making Washington the centre of our economic universe.
America needs Africa, just as Africa needs America.
The United States needs markets, strategic partnerships, energy resources, critical minerals, consumers, talent and geopolitical cooperation. Africa needs capital, technology, educational partnerships, investment, markets and knowledge transfer.
This should be a relationship between partners, not a permanent psychological hierarchy between the continent that grants access and the continent that begs for access.
And America should remember something else.
Immigrants have not simply received from America.
They have served America.
They have worn American military uniforms. They have worked in American hospitals. They have built companies. They have taught American children. They have conducted research. They have worked farms, factories, restaurants, laboratories and construction sites. They have paid taxes, raised families and strengthened communities.
Pew Research estimates that about 2 percent of adult immigrants, including noncitizens, are currently serving or have previously served in the U.S. military.
That reality deserves recognition.
America’s immigration debate must therefore distinguish between legitimate national security concerns and the dangerous temptation to treat immigration itself as a national security problem.
Security is legitimate.
But isolation is not security.
A fortress can protect a country from some threats while simultaneously protecting that country from opportunities.
For Africa, the lesson is equally profound.
We should not respond to American restrictions with anger alone.
We should respond with ambition.
Let us build universities that Americans want to attend.
Let us create hospitals that attract international patients.
Let us build agricultural systems that export food instead of importing it.
Let us establish technology ecosystems that attract Silicon Valley investors.
Let us develop tourism destinations that Americans dream of visiting.
Let us create financial markets capable of mobilising African capital.
Let us build roads, ports, airports, energy systems and digital infrastructure that make African commerce competitive.
Let us make Banjul, Dakar, Accra, Lagos, Nairobi, Kigali and Johannesburg destinations for global talent rather than merely departure points for African talent.
And let The Gambia position itself intelligently within this transformation.
The future should not be a choice between Africa and America.
The future should be a partnership in which Africans can travel to America, Americans can travel to Africa, students can exchange knowledge, companies can exchange capital, universities can exchange research and societies can exchange ideas.
But if Washington increasingly says, “You cannot come,” Africa must eventually become confident enough to say:
“We understand. Now watch us build.”
That is not isolationism.
That is Pan African self confidence.
The greatest response to a visa wall is not a louder complaint.
It is a stronger continent.
Africa must stop measuring its success by how many of its brightest citizens can escape it and start measuring success by how many people from the rest of the world desperately want to come here.
And perhaps one day, an American entrepreneur will look across the Atlantic and say:
“Why should I go to Africa?”
And the answer from Banjul, Accra, Dakar, Nairobi, Kigali and Lagos will be:
“Because the future is being built here.”
That is the Africa we owe our children.
That is the Gambia we must build.
And that, ultimately, may be the most intelligent response to “America First.”
Africa must finally become Africa first.