International education actors in Africa are uniting with their United State partners to call on the U.S. government to ‘rethink’ visa policies for African students. This is as more than a third of prospective international students applying to study in the U.S. last year were turned away.

The F-1 visa refusal rate surged to 36 per cent in 2023 for a total of 253,355 refusals, higher than in 2022. The rate of refusal for student visas was nearly twice that of refusal for other types of visa.

However, the U.S. State Department said it issued nearly 5.2 million nonimmigrant visas worldwide, more than in any previous year over the same period.

“We take seriously our role in supporting travel and tourism, a key sector and critical enabler for U.S. job growth, while upholding national security. International visitors have in recent years contributed as much as $239 billion annually to the U.S. economy, supporting an estimated 9.5 million American jobs.

“In the first half of 2024, the Department issued nearly 4.1 million B visitor visas (and border crossing cards) for tourists and temporary business travelers worldwide. We issued visas to nearly 134,000 exchange visitor program participants and 115,000 students,” it stated yesterday.

According to the stakeholders, the high visa denial rates for Africa were the worst compared globally, including to the Middle East, South America and South Asia – reaching a high of 71 per cent for West Africa.

The high rejections were unfairly denying able and bright African students a chance at studying in universities in one of the world’s most popular destinations, the agents noted.

Giving reasons for the visa refusals, Shayne Aman Premji, co-founder of African study abroad platform, Craydel, said: “Many universities and colleges in the U.S. issue the I-20 after asking and taking a very low deposit of tuition fees (10-20 per cent), meaning that in the end a high number of applicants get the I-20 but fail to satisfy immigration officials that they are capable of paying the balance plus living costs.”

“This is unlike many countries in Europe, where universities require a higher percentage of tuition fees deposit before applying for a visa. And with lower tuition fees than their U.S. counterparts, this makes it easier for applicants to convince authorities that they can raise the balance plus living expenses, resulting in relatively higher visa issuances and lower rejections,” he noted.

In some countries, African students also failed visa interviews due to lack of verifiable identification documents including birth certificates, he explained. In such cases where authenticity of documents is in question, applications are usually rejected.

David J. Bier, associate director of immigration studies at The Cato Institute, calculated the effect of these trends on the U.S. economy. He said: “It is important to understand that before a student can even apply for an F 1 visa they must already be accepted into a government‐approved university. This means that the US Department of State turned down 253,355 students who would have likely paid roughly $30,000 per year or $7.6 billion per year in tuition and living expenses. Over four years that number rises to $30.4 billion in lost economic benefits to the United States.”

“To put that in context, the over one million international students at U.S. colleges and universities contributed more than US$40 billion to the U.S. economy during the 2022-2023 academic year—up by nearly US$6.3 billion (almost 19 per cent) compared to the prior academic year—and supported more than 368,000 jobs.”