confidentially speaking
The Africa Confidential Blog
Washington's new man in Africa
Blue Lines
Retired Ambassador Tibor P. Nagy has finally emerged as the choice for Assistant Secretary of African
Affairs 475 days after Donald Trump was inaugurated as United States President. Nagy, a Trump loyalist, now has to win approval in Congress,
where his name was mooted in March.
The appointment may bring relief to an Africa Bureau sapped of
morale, leadership, and expertise. Nagy will replace Ambassador Donald
Yamamoto, who took the role on an interim basis. Under Trump,
Africa
has been relegated further down the totem pole of US government
concerns. The Bureau faces cuts in funding, a personnel crisis in
Washington and at embassies abroad, and scant interest from the White
House in the human rights and good governance agenda.
However, Nagy has a long experience as a career dipomat,
including postings as Ambassador to Guinea
(1996-99) and Ethiopia (1999-2002). To an administration which has extolled a harder line
against political refugees and migrants, Nagy brings personal
experience of displacement and statelessness. He was born in Hungary in
1949, where his father, Tibor Nagy
Snr., was an army engineer who later
became active in the revolution of 1956. Following the Soviet invasion, father and son fled on foot to Austria, where they were
processed for political asylum in the US. After nine months they were
admitted and Nagy senior served as a senior official in the US Agency
for International Development.
