PREVIEW
A Republican bill to revamp US diplomacy in Africa exposes some contradictions at the heart of the administration’s approach to the continent
Republicans in the United States House of Representatives are pushing plans to revamp Washington’s diplomatic offer across Africa via a Foreign Service Modernization Act, published on 2 June, to address staffing and ambassador shortages.
The bill also calls for greater investment in critical foreign-language expertise including Arabic, French, and Swahili. The Trump administration has shown little interest in traditional diplomacy across Africa, threatening to close embassies in South Sudan and Somalia and scaling back staffing in others. Instead, President Donald Trump has invested significant powers in his senior African envoy Massad Boulos who has led the US’s push for greater access to critical minerals and brokered the fragile peace agreement between Rwanda and Congo-Kinshasa.
‘We are going to make sure the State Department hires the most qualified, not the most woke,’ said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast. The draft bill also features the creation of a pilot program for a ‘Diplomatic Reserve Corps’ for crisis deployments.
Veteran naval officer Frank Garcia was sworn in as Trump’s first Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs on 1 June, traditionally the top Africa-focused US government job, 18 months after Trump’s inauguration.
And the Trump administration’s restrictions on African and other international football fans hoping to attend the football World Cup which the US is co-hosting with Canada and Mexico risk hurting more public goodwill towards Washington across Africa.
Several African teams have reported difficulties obtaining visas to enter the US. The decision to deport Somali referee Omar Artan, one of 52 officials chosen by football governing body FIFA, claiming his alleged ‘association with suspected members of terror organisations’ has been widely criticised in Europe and Africa. FIFA, which said it was powerless to intervene after the US ban, will pay Artan his full fee for officiating at the World Cup. And the Europe’s UEFA appointed Artan to officiate in the 2026 Super Cup on 12 August in Salzburg between UEFA Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain and UEFA Europa League winners Aston Villa in a calculated rebuke to the US.
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