(Reuters) -Mali has announced it will require U.S. nationals to post bonds of up to $10,000 for business and tourist visas, after the Trump administration said the West African nation would be added to its visa bond programme.
The U.S. embassy in Mali said on Friday it will require bonds of up to $10,000 for tourist and business visas under the pilot programme effective October 23.
The funds will be returned to travellers if they depart in accordance with the terms of their visas, according to a U.S. government notice.
In a statement on Sunday, Mali’s foreign ministry said the government “deplores the unilateral decision by the U.S. government”, adding that it undermines an earlier bilateral agreement on long-stay multiple-entry visas.
“In accordance with the principle of reciprocity, Mali has decided to introduce an identical visa program, imposing the same conditions and requirements on U.S. nationals as those applied to Malian citizens,” the statement said.
U.S. State Department figures for the period 2015-2024 show that fewer than 3,000 non-immigrant U.S. visas are issued to Malians each year. Figures for the number of visas issued by Mali to U.S. citizens were not immediately available.
President Donald Trump has made cracking down on illegal immigration a focus of his presidency, boosting resources to secure the border and arresting people in the U.S. illegally.
The State Department said in August that visa applicants from Zambia and Malawi will be required to pay bonds up to $15,000. Zambia’s government voiced concern about the “unnecessary financial strain” this would cause.
(Reporting by Tiemoko Diallo and Fadimata KontaoWriting by Anait MiridzhanianEditing by Robbie Corey-Boulet and Frances Kerry)
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -At least 42 people were killed in a bus crash in a mountainous region of northern South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a statement on Monday.
The crash took place on the N1 highway near Makhado in the Limpopo province, the statement said. Many of the travellers were citizens of Zimbabwe and Malawi who were en route to their home countries from the city of Gqeberha in the Eastern Cape.
“This incident is a tragedy for South Africa and our sister states of Zimbabwe and Malawi alike,” Ramaphosa said.
(Reporting by Disha Mishra in Bengaluru and Anathi Madubela in Johannesburg; Editing by Alison Williams and Shri Navaratnam)
Malawi’s former President Peter Mutharika has taken a comfortable lead in the country’s presidential race, with two-thirds of districts having reported provisional results.
The 85-year old has received around 66% of the valid votes counted so far, with his closest rival, the incumbent Lazarus Chakwera, 70, trailing on around 24%.
Results declared so far indicate that Mutharika has won in areas known to be Chakwera strongholds, including the capital, Lilongwe, and Nkhotakota.
But Chakwera’s camp has not given up, saying that once results are declared from other areas, his vote will increase, forcing a run-off.
A candidate needs more than 50% of the vote to be declared the winner, with Malawians eagerly awaiting the final result from last Tuesday’s election.
The Malawi Electoral Commission has until the end of Wednesday to announce it.
At least two of the 12 districts still to declare results have a large number of registered voters, and Chakwera’s camp believes he will do well there. These includes rural areas around Lilongwe and Dedza.
Two other districts, where Mutharika is expected to do well, have had their results withheld by the electoral commission as it checks whether they are accurate.
The commission said it was committed to transparency, accuracy and credibility.
It added that it was carefully checking every tally sheet, after the constitutional court annulled Mutharika’s victory in 2019 because of irregularities.
Chakwera won the re-run by a wide margin, but during his presidency Malawi’s economic crisis has deepened, with high inflation, food and fuel shortages and constant power cuts.
On Friday, Chakwera’s party said it had discovered “irregularities” and “serious anomalies”, and had asked the electoral commission to conduct a “physical audit” of results. The party did not specify the irregularities.
Police said eight data entry clerks had been arrested on accusations of trying to manipulate results.
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Police in Malawi have arrested eight people for alleged electoral fraud as the country waits for the final results of Tuesday’s general election.
Inspector General Merlyne Yolamu said the suspects, who were working as data entry clerks, had been trying to manipulate the figures.
Malawi’s 2019 election was marred by controversy when the highest court annulled then President Peter Mutharika’s victory, citing widespread irregularities.
As a result, Malawi’s electoral commission is on high alert for any potential issues. Official tallies, so far, suggest Mutharika is leading the race for the presidency with incumbent Lazarus Chakwera in second place.
More results from Malawi’s 36 districts are expected to be released on Saturday – a candidate needs to win more than 50% of the vote, or a run-off is held.
In the meantime, Chakwera’s Malawi Congress Party said it had lodged a complaint with the electoral commission, claiming to have discovered irregularities in the count.
Officials did not specify what those irregularities were.
The commission is expected to announce the outcome of the election only after all votes have been tallied and verified in order to avoid the possibility of the final result being challenged.
According to law, the electoral commission has until the end of Wednesday to announce the final tallies.
In 2019, when Mutharika’s victory was annulled, a court said there had been widespread tampering, including the use of Tipp-Ex correction fluid on results sheets.
Lazarus Chakwera (L) and Peter Mutharika (R) are long-standing political rivals [AFP via Getty Images]
Chakwera, 70, won the re-run by a wide margin, propelling him to the presidency.
Mutharika, 85, is hoping to regain office in what would be a dramatic political comeback.
Malawians also voted in parliamentary and local elections following a campaign dominated by the worsening economic crisis that has seen a severe shortage of fuel and foreign currency.
The official inflation rate is close to 30%, with a frozen chicken in a supermarket in the capital, Lilongwe, costing about $20 (£15), in a nation where most people live on $2 a day or less.
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African leaders have long been reluctant to criticize Russia and now that President Vladimir Putin has killed off a deal to allow Ukraine to export grain, they know they are more dependent than ever on Moscow’s largesse to feed millions of people at risk of going hungry.
Having canceled the pact on Monday, Moscow unleashed four nights of attacks on the Ukrainian ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk — two vital export facilities — damaging the infrastructure of global and Ukrainian traders and destroying 60,000 tons of grain. In the latest assault, on Thursday night, a barrage of Kalibr missiles hit the granaries of an agricultural enterprise in Odesa.
“The decision by Russia to exit the Black Sea Grain Initiative is a stab [in] the back,” tweeted Abraham Korir Sing’Oei, a senior foreign ministry official from Kenya, one of the African countries that has received donations of Russian fertilizer in recent months.
The resulting rise in global food prices “disproportionately impacts countries in the Horn of Africa already impacted by drought,” he added.
Sing’Oei’s was a solitary voice, however. Rather than reproaching Moscow, African leaders have remained largely silent as they prepare to attend a summit hosted by Putin in St Petersburg next week. This follows an African mission led by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa last month to Kyiv and St Petersburg in a bid to broker peace.
The diplomatic stakes could hardly be higher.
Putin had been due to make a return visit to Africa next month to attend a summit of the BRICS emerging economies in Johannesburg. That trip has been called off, however, “by mutual agreement” to avoid exposing the Kremlin chief to the risk of arrest under an indictment for war crimes issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Without the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal brokered a year ago by the United Nations and Turkey that enabled Ukraine to export 33 million metric tons of grains and oilseeds, many African governments now have nowhere else to turn to but Russia.
“It’s going to be based on political alignments,” said Samuel Ramani, an Oxford-based academic and author of a book on Russia’s resurgent influence in Africa.
Comparing Russia’s tactics to blackmail, Ramani added: “They’re going to be offering free grain to some, they’re going to be selling to others. It’s full-fledged grain diplomacy.”
No deal
Russia said on Monday it would no longer guarantee the safety of ships passing through a transit corridor as it announced its official withdrawal from the deal, declaring the northwestern Black Sea to be once again “temporarily dangerous.” It followed up by threatening to fire on all ships going across the Black Sea to Ukrainian ports, sparking a tit-for-tat warning from Kyiv that it would do the same to all vessels sailing to Russian-controlled Black Sea ports.
Over the 12 months it functioned, the grain deal helped bring down global food prices by as much as 20 percent from the peak set in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. It also provided aid agencies with vital supplies.
Russia repeatedly claimed it has not seen the benefits of the three-times extended agreement, however.
Although Western sanctions carve out exemptions for food and fertilizer the Kremlin argues that sanctions targeting Russian individuals and its state agriculture bank are hindering its own exports, thus contravening a second deal agreed last July under which the U.N. committed to facilitating these exports for a three-year period.
The Kremlin said Wednesday that it would resume talks on the Black Sea grain deal only if the U.N. implements this part of the deal within the next three months.
Propaganda war
Another of Moscow’s criticisms is that cargoes of Ukrainian grain have headed mostly to rich countries; not to those in Africa and Asia bearing the brunt of the global food crisis.
Over the last year, a quarter of all the grain and oilseeds shipped under the initiative have headed to China, the largest recipient, while some 18 percent went to Spain and 10 percent to Turkey, according to U.N. data.
This is not the whole story, however. Trade data from the World Bank shows that much of the wheat exported to Turkey is processed and re-exported, as flour, pasta and other products, to Africa and the Middle East.
Most importantly, all grain that flows onto global markets reduces prices, wherever it ends up, counter the U.N. and others.
Russia has canceled the Black Sea deal and unleashed attacks on the Ukrainian ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk | Chris McGrath/Getty Images
“It is not a question of where the Black Sea food actually goes; it is a question of it [bringing] international prices down, so whether you are a rich country or poor country, you can benefit,” said Arif Husain, the U.N. World Food Programme’s chief economist, speaking at an event on the Black Sea Grain Initiative in Rome recently.
These arguments have been at the center of a months-long propaganda battle between Moscow and Kyiv over who can rightly claim to be feeding the world and who is responsible for soaring food prices.
In the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the Kremlin’s narrative — that western sanctions are to blame — was quick to take hold in many parts of Africa.
Ukraine sought to counter this with a humanitarian food program, Grain from Ukraine, launched in November 2022, but shiploads of fertilizer donated to countries, including Malawi and Kenya, served to sweeten the Kremlin’s message.
“A true friend knows no weather. A true friend comes to the rescue when you need them the most. And you just demonstrated that to us,” Malawi’s Agriculture Minister Sam Dalitso Kawale said upon receiving a fertilizer gift from Russian firm Uralchem in March.
Feeling the pinch
Now, countries like Malawi need friends in Moscow more than ever. Not only does the end of the grain deal cut them off from flows of Ukrainian grain, leaving them dependent on Russian supplies, but it also pushes up prices.
Moscow’s withdrawal from the agreement is unlikely to have the same impact on prices as its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Over the last year, Ukraine has opened up alternative export routes and a slowdown in shipments moving under the initiative also meant commodity markets had been expecting Moscow to quit the deal.
While Ukraine can continue to export grain through alternative routes, these come with extra logistical and transport costs, squeezing prices for Ukrainian farmers, at one end, and pushing up costs for buyers, at the other.
For food-insecure countries in the Horn of Africa even a small increase in prices could spell disaster, said Shashwat Saraf, emergency director in East Africa for the International Rescue Committee (IRC).
Domestic production has dropped amid conflict and severe drought, leaving the region increasingly reliant on food imports and food aid. As such, higher food prices will hit hard, he said, adding that traders already report “feeling the pinch.”
With the cost of food rising, the IRC and other humanitarian organizations will be forced to either reduce the number of people they provide cash transfers or reduce the value of these themselves — and this at a time when the number of food insecure people is rising, said Saraf. “When we should be expanding our coverage, we will be actually reducing [it].”
Slap in the face
African leaders attending Putin’s summit next week will be silent on such issues, predicted Christopher Fomunyoh, African regional director at the U.S. National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and one of the Grain from Ukraine ambassadors appointed by Kyiv.
But they must not return empty-handed again, he said. Russia’s discontinuation of the grain deal, following the South African-led visit to St Petersburg, is a “slap in the face,” Fomunyoh told POLITICO. “Their own credibility is now at stake. And my hope is that they will have to speak out in order to not further lose credibility with their own populations.”
In 2022, Russia’s narrative was dominant in Africa, but that has slowly changed through the course of this year, he explained, adding that Africans were starting to see through Moscow’s propaganda.
“There is always a time delay,” said Fomunyoh. “But my sense is that in the days and weeks to come, people are going to see very clearly [that] the destruction of infrastructure in Odessa, the destruction of stock, wheat, and grain in Chornomorsk is contributing to scarcity and the inflation in prices.”
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BLANTYRE, Malawi (AP) — Cyclone Freddy has dissipated after killing hundreds of people and displacing thousands in Mozambique and Malawi since late last week, although flooding remains a threat in both countries, a regional monitoring center said late Wednesday.
The cyclone has killed at least 225 people in Malawi’s southern region including Blantyre, the country’s financial hub, according to local authorities. Another 88,000 people are displaced. In neighboring Mozambique, officials say at least 20 people have died since the storm made landfall in the port town of Quelimane on Saturday night. Over 45,000 people are still holed up in shelters, with about 1,300 square kilometers (800 square miles) still under water, according to the EU’s Copernicus satellite system.
“There are many casualties — either wounded, missing, or dead and the numbers will only increase in the coming days,” said Guilherme Botelho, the emergency project coordinator in Blantyre for Doctors Without Borders. Malawi, which has been battling a cholera outbreak, is at risk of a resurgence of the disease, Botelho said, “especially since the vaccine coverage in Blantyre is very poor.”
The aid organization suspended outreach programs to protect its staff against flash floods and landslides but is supporting cyclone relief efforts at a local hospital.
Freddy was initially projected to exit back to the sea on Wednesday but has since waned and is no longer classed as a tropical cyclone, the United Nations’ weather monitoring center in Réunion said.
But even with the cyclone having dissipated, “the emergency will not be over for many communities as rain from upland areas continues to flood downstream areas over the coming days,” said Lucy Mwangi, the country director for Malawi at the aid organization Concern Worldwide.
“Even rich countries that are advanced democracies would have been no match for the level of destruction this cyclone has brought,” said Kim Yi Dionne, a political scientist at the University of California Riverside. Freddy accumulated more energy over its journey across the Indian Ocean than an entire U.S. hurricane season.
Yi Dionne said that the scale of damage is despite Malawi’s disaster agency having prepared and planned “for the challenges that come with our contemporary climate crisis.”
Scientists say climate change caused by mostly industrialized nations pumping greenhouse gases into the air has worsened cyclone activity, making them more intense and more frequent. The recently ended La Nina that impacts weather worldwide also increased cyclone activity in the region.
African nations, who only contribute about 4% of planet-warming emissions, are “once again paying the steepest price to climate change, including their own lives,” said Lynn Chiripamberi, who leads Oxfam’s southern Africa humanitarian program.
“Freddy is quite an exceptional weather phenomenon,” Anne-Claire Fontan, a tropical cyclone scientific officer at the World Meteorological Organization told The Associated Press. Its longevity, distance covered, the number of times it has intensified and the amount of energy it accumulated over time has been extraordinary, she said.
She added that its second landfall in Mozambique “is explained by the presence of two competing steering influences. It is not rare.”
Freddy first developed near Australia in early February. The U.N.’s weather agency has convened an expert panel to determine whether it has broken the record for the longest-ever cyclone in recorded history, which was set by 31-day Hurricane John in 1994.
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Alexandre Nhampossa and Tom Gould contributed to this report from Maputo, Mozambique. Kabukuru reported from Mombasa, Kenya.
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
At least 190 people have died after Tropical Cyclone Freddy ripped through southern Malawi, the country’s Department of Disaster Management Affairs said Tuesday.
At least 584 have been injured and 37 people have been reported missing in the country.
The Malawi Ministry of Natural Resources and Climate Change said Tuesday the cyclone is “weakening but will continue to cause torrential rains associated with windy conditions in most parts of Southern Malawi districts.”
“The threat of heavy flooding and damaging winds remains very high,” the report added.
Charles Kalemba, a commissioner for the Department of Disaster Management Affairs agency, told CNN Tuesday that the situation had worsened in southern Malawi.
“It’s worse today. A number of places are flooding and a number of roads and bridges are cut. Visibility is almost zero. Electricity is off and also network is a problem. It’s becoming more and more dire,” Kalemba said, adding that rescue operations have also been affected by poor weather.
“It’s tough. We need to use machinery (for rescue operations) but machines cannot go to places where they were supposed to excavate because of the rains,” Kalemba added.
Malawi’s Department of Climate Change and Meteorological Services warned Monday that “the threat of damaging winds and heavy flooding remains very high.”
Kalemba added that an improvement in weather is expected from Wednesday. “Possibly by tomorrow, the cyclone may have passed. We are hoping to see improvement from tomorrow but today is worse. There are heavy rains and lots of water.”
In Mozambique, at least 10 people were killed and 13 injured in the Zambezia province, according to state broadcaster Radio Mozambique, citing the National Institute of Disaster Risk Management.
The deadly cyclone has broken records for the longest-lasting storm of its kind after making landfall in Mozambique for a second time, more than two weeks after the first.
More than 22,000 people have been displaced by the tropical storm, according to Radio Mozambique.
“It’s quite likely that number will go up,” Guy Taylor, chief of advocacy, communications and partnerships for UNICEF in Mozambique, told CNN Tuesday.
“The size or the strength of the storm was much higher than the last time … the impact in terms of damage and the impact on people’s lives has been more substantial,” he said.
At least 11 people were confirmed dead on Monday after a deadly tropical storm slammed into southern Malawi, leaving many injured and unaccounted for, local authorities told CNN.
“The whole of southern Malawi is under the influence of Cyclone Freddy,” Malawi police spokesman Peter Kalaya said.
“We started feeling the impact of the cyclone on Friday. It has caused a lot of havoc. In Blantyre alone, which is the commercial capital of Malawi in the southern region, this morning as of 7:00 a.m. (1:00 a.m. ET), we got reports of 11 confirmed deaths with 16 people missing, most of whom have been carried away by running waters, and several others have been injured,” he added.
Kalaya warned the numbers of dead and missing could rise due to the heavy rains and strong winds.
Schools will remain shut in 10 of the worst affected districts until Wednesday, Malawi’s education ministry said in a statement.
Kalaya said the destruction caused by the storm had inundated roadways and triggered blackouts in Malawi’s worst affected areas, making rescue efforts difficult.
“They [rescue teams] are trying their best to provide the help they can. Where they can move around, they are moving around. Because the rains are still falling, rescue efforts are affected in different locations,” he told CNN.
The deadly Cyclone Freddy has broken records for the longest-lasting storm of its kind and has struck neighboring Mozambique and also Madagascar, killing a total of more than 20 people and displacing thousands of others across both countries.
It has been described as a “very rare” storm by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which called its journey so far “incredible and dangerous.”
