Numerous US officials say that the United States Embassies in Africa are faced with chronic lack of personnel. This undermines US foreign policy goals on the continent and does not allow all Washington’s tasks, writes Foreign Policy.
US embassies in some critically important countries of the continent are not comprehensible by almost a third, and in some – half, sources are alarming.
“Constant and acute shortage of full -time posts of the diplomatic service in US representative offices in Africa causes serious concern,” said Senator Jim Rish in an interview with Foreign Policy. “Despite the fact that the global needs and requirements for the department are huge, the terrible situation with personnel and human resources reflects that Africa is a secondary task, and not the priority of global significance.”
Experts believe that American diplomacy is included in the protracted cycle of a serious personnel crisis. And the situation with embassies in Africa is one of its markers.
The crisis is associated with former US President Donald Trump. In 2020, the Democrats headquarters for the US Senate Committee published a report “Diplomacy in Crisis”, which stated: in the first year of the work of the Republican Administration of Donald Trump, the State Department lost 60% of the career ambassadors. The subsequent years of his presidency did not solve the problem.
The problems did not end with the coming to the power of Joe Biden.
published in July 2021, the report of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy and Harvard School Kennedy showed that 31.42% of representatives of the American diplomatic corps thought about retired and studied alternative options.
Researchers in the report revealed a number of factors affecting the outflow of personnel. Among them: the appointment process in need of reform, the low pace of promotion and the bias of the authorities.
This makes the crisis of diplomacy dangerous for American influence in the world and specifically in Africa.