A coaching camp for the Senegalese girls’s basketball crew within the US has been scrapped, with the West African nation’s prime minister saying he cancelled it as a result of a few of the squad had been denied US visas.
Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko stated the crew would now prepare in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, “in a sovereign and conducive setting”.
It comes amid reviews that the US plans to impose recent journey restrictions on 25 extra African nations, together with Senegal.
Earlier this month the US introduced a ban on residents from 12 nations, together with seven from Africa. There have been additionally partial journey restrictions on nationals from an extra seven nations, with three from Africa.
It stays unclear why the Senegalese athletes had been denied visas.
A US State Division spokesperson advised the BBC it couldn’t touch upon particular person instances as a result of visa data are confidential beneath US legislation.
“Knowledgeable of the refusal of issuing visas to a number of members of the Senegal girls’s nationwide basketball crew, I’ve instructed the Ministry of Sports activities to easily cancel the ten-day preparatory coaching initially deliberate in the USA of America,” Sonko stated on Thursday in an announcement shared to social media.
Studies say 5 Senegalese basketball gamers and 13 crew officers had been travelling to satisfy different members of the squad and their coach who had been already within the US, to heat up for the 2025 Ladies’s AfroBasket match in Ivory Coast subsequent month.
However their visa purposes weren’t permitted.
Senegal has top-of-the-line girls’s basketball groups in Africa – persistently reaching the ultimate 4 in AfroBasket tournaments and boasting gamers from prime leagues within the US, Europe and Egypt.
The visa refusals are elevating eyebrows as a result of, in keeping with the just lately leaked diplomatic cable containing particulars of the prolonged journey restrictions, focused nations got as much as 60 days to handle the issues raised by the US.
These reportedly embrace folks overstaying their visas, lack of co-operation with deportations, hyperlinks to terror assaults within the US, antisemitism or what it termed “anti-American” exercise.
Following the reported new journey restrictions, Senegal’s international ministry urged nationals to adjust to their permitted intervals of keep within the US.
Though it didn’t instantly touch upon Senegal’s potential inclusion within the newest record of restricted nations, the federal government assertion underscored that diplomatic and consular companies had been working in shut collaboration with the US administration.
In the meantime, Nigeria’s Overseas Minister Yussuf Tuggar stated the expanded journey bans may impede potential vitality and uncommon earth mineral offers which West African nations can provide the US.
The Trump administration insists nationwide safety issues and the excessive price of visa overstays from some nations have to be addressed.
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