Trump’s Africa team starts to take shape

Top State Department job like to go to J. Peter Pham, a diplomatic very familiar with Ugandan issues

ANALYSIS | THE INDEPENDENT REPORTER & AGENCIES | U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to nominate a former special envoy as Washington’s top Africa official, while a Republican aide is likely to be the White House’s Africa director.

The swift assembly of this team marks a departure from Trump’s first term, when key Africa State Department positions remained vacant for years and the White House saw frequent turnover in its top Africa roles.

J. Peter Pham, who served as special envoy for the Sahel and Great Lakes regions in the first Trump administration, is likely to take the top State Department job, four people familiar with the talks told Semafor.

Tibor Nagy, who was assistant secretary for African Affairs in Trump’s first term, is also returning to the State Department, where he’ll be bringing decades of US-Africa experience to serve as acting undersecretary for management.

John Peter Pham is an American academic and author specialising in international relations with a focus on African affairs.

In 2014, as the Africa Center Director, he featured on BBC Radio 5’s Up All Night to discuss the possibility of U.S. sanctions against Uganda in response to then-newly bill that criminalized homosexuality titled `Pham: Uganda Does Not Fear Human Rights Blowback’.

Pham was the United States Special Envoy for the Sahel Region of Africa, from March 2020 until the end of President Donald Trump’s administration in January 2021. Prior to this, he served as the Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region of Africa from November 2018.

During this period, Pham visited Uganda and met with President Yoweri Museveni in May 2019 at State House and with then-Minister of Foreign Affairs Sam Kuteesa and the-then Deputy Chief of Defence Forces, Lt Gen Wilson Mbadi at the Ministry of Defence and Veteran Affairs headquarters in Mbuya.

Prior to these appointments, Pham was also Vice President of the Atlantic Council and Director of its Africa Center. In September 2020, Pham was accorded the personal rank of ambassador, becoming the first Vietnamese American to achieve that rank. After leaving the Trump administration, Pham rejoined the Atlantic Council as a Distinguished Fellow.

As an ordained Episcopal priest, Pham is a volunteer assistant at St. Paul’s Parish, K Street, in Washington, D.C.

Recently, Pham has been a Non-Executive Director on the Board of Directors of Rainbow Rare Earths, a mining company operating the Phalaborwa Project in South Africa and the high-grade Gakara Project in Burundi. He has recently visited those projects in that capacity.

The White House’s Africa team is also coming together, with Joe Foltz the favourite to be named as the National Security Council’s senior Africa director, three of the people said. Foltz brings experience from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where he organized hearings on Russian and Chinese influence in Africa.

Rudy Atallah, a retired lieutenant colonel who has extensive Pentagon experience in Africa-related roles, is set to serve as deputy to the incoming White House’s counterterrorism chief, Sebastian Gorka, two people familiar with the transition said.

Pham, Foltz, and Atallah declined to comment. Spokespeople for the Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment.

Both Pham and Foltz face potential hurdles to serving in the new administration. Some Republicans have expressed reservations about Foltz’s past work under two Democratic administrations, although he also served in President Trump’s first term.

Pham’s nomination during Trump’s first term was blocked by the Senate due to a policy disagreement over Western Sahara. But the lawmaker who threatened to hold up his nomination has since retired, and Pham, who has travelled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in recent months, is odds on favorite this time.

Trump’s incoming team will have to grapple with the brutal civil war in Sudan, countering Russian and Chinese influence on the continent, and the pending expiration of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, which provides some African countries with duty-free access to the U.S. market.

There has been a growing awareness in US foreign policy circles that the Africa portfolio is increasingly crucial to many long-term challenges. It’s also at the core of so many of the incoming Trump administration’s driving impulses. That includes everything from tackling global terrorism and illegal migration to countering China and Russia, whose respective influence on the continent is rising.

The Biden administration did of course try to address these same challenges, and much more besides, but had mixed results. This was even after a significant effort to reset the Africa policy approach, with initiatives such as the US-Africa Leaders Summit in 2022 and building out the Lobito Corridor, a railway project connecting Angola, Zambia, and DR Congo.

Another reason for the fairly rapid team configuration is that Pham, in particular, is a very well-known and respected player in US-Africa policy circles in Washington. As one person put it to me, it feels like he has been “auditioning for the role for decades.”

Democratic concerns about Pham and Foltz have been relatively muted, unlike the reaction to several of the incoming administration’s high-profile nominees. Both men are known quantities and generally described as “serious and thoughtful” about US-Africa affairs, even by those who disagreed with Pham’s recent comments about Somaliland independence or on South Africa. This shouldn’t be too surprising given the traditionally bipartisan nature of US-Africa policy. There are some concerns on the Republican side, however, with some grumbles about both perhaps not being sufficiently loyal to the disruptive Trump agenda.

Trump should appoint special envoys to the Sahel, Horn of Africa, Great Lakes, and Sudan, the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Cameron Hudson said.

Expect a “singularly transaction approach” to US interests in Africa from the new administration that will provide the continent with opportunities and challenges, Ken Opalo wrote in Foreign Affairs.

The Trump administration has the chance to reimagine US-Africa economic ties, the Carnegie Endowment argued, offering a list of policy recommendations.