Molly Catherine Phee, a career diplomat, is President Biden’s  U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.  (Credit USIP.org) 

By  Gary  Raynaldo    DIPLOMATIC  TIMES

President Biden’s top diplomat in Africa Molly Catherine Phee said diversity within the U.S. State Department  is “entirely insufficient and does not reflect American society”.  Ambassador Phee made the comments while speaking at Howard University’s Center for African Studies and the Department of African Studies’ U.S. Policy Toward Africa discussion last month.  Phee, a career member of the senior foreign service with the rank of minister-counselor, was sworn in as the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs on September 30, 2021.   She is the highest ranking U.S. official for Africa .  Assistant Secretary Phee , last November,  traveled with Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal on his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa as Secretary of State. The trip included a major policy speech in Nigeria, where the Secretary outlined U.S.-Africa policy under the Biden-Harris administration.  On Dec. 15, 2021 at Howard University in Washington D.C., as a follow-up to their trip, Assistant Secretary Phee offered remarks and then participated in a Q&A with Howard faculty, students and attendees.

Dr. Krista Johnson, Director of Howard University’s Center for African Studies, moderated the discussion. Dr. Johnson asked Ambassador Phee to comment on the lack of diversity in the U.S. Foreign Service. Dr. Johnson  referred  to an op-ed written in the December 2020 issue of Foreign Affairs by  Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who currently serves as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations,  and fellow diplomat William J. Burns,  who called the lack of diversity in America’s diplomatic corps “a national security crisis.” 

“First of all I want to say that I agree the State Department’s diversity is entirely insufficient. It does not reflect American society. That makes us weaker as an institution because we don’t draw on the strengths of our society. And that makes us weaker in terms of our projection abroad in terms of demonstrating American values and frankly of reality.  I absolutely agree that we’re not where we want to be, we’re not where we need to be.”

-Molly Catherine Phee,   U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs

 U.S. State Department / Foreign Service Far From Being Racially Diverse

Credit: Gary Raynaldo /   Department of State headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The State Department reported as of  2019 that 81 percent of its Foreign Service generalists and 75 percent of its specialists are white, while 59 percent of generalists and 71 percent of specialists are men.  Only 5.3 percent of FS generalists are African American; and 8.8 percent of its FS specialists are African American.

Ambassador Phee Says  Biden State Department Committed to Diversity 

Ambassador Phee noted that the Biden State Department in April 2021, created a diversity officer position for the first time in the Department’s history, to advance multi-culturalism in the U.S. Foreign Service.  U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken named former ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley as the State Department’s first chief diversity officer to help make the diplomatic corps personnel reflect America. 

“What I can tell you from the top, there is really a strong push that business as usual is not acceptable, we need to change our patterns of behavior. And we need to take specific actions to do better. We talk about recruitment. I would really like to encourage recruitment but from my perspective as someone whose been around for a long time, we also really need to look at retention. I think we have over time improved recruitment but we are not keeping people. Why aren’t we keeping people.  Is it a question of diversity, and people not feeling welcome and included. Is it a product problem of performance management and leadership in the State Department or is it both. There is a lot more that we should do as a society and as a government. I feel very strongly, and I have been around for a long time, that Secretary Antony Blinken and his team are really committed to trying to do what is different. He has appointed for the first time in 2021 a diversity officer-the first time we (ever) had a diversity officer.”

-Ambassador Phee 

Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee meets with Ghana Vice President  Mahamudu Bawumia in Accra Oct. 18, 2021.

Assistant Secretary of State for Phee embarked on her first trip to Africa last October traveling in Ghana, where she met with Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, senior government officials and civil society representatives. She then traveled to Burkina Faso.  The Ambassador’s trip was taken to “reaffirm our strategic partnership and explore cooperation to advance shared global priorities, including ending the COVID-19 pandemic, expanding U.S.-Ghana trade and investment, addressing the climate crisis, creating opportunities for clean energy, and strengthening democracy in West Africa, through Ghana’s leadership as Chair of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS),”  according to the State Department.

The future of U.S.-Africa policy,  According to Ambassador Phee 

“As was also mentioned, last month I joined Secretary Blinken on his first trip to the continent as Secretary of State.  We traveled to Kenya, and to Senegal, and to Nigeria.  And when the Secretary was in Abuja you may have seen the speech that he delivered at the headquarters of ECOWAS.  ECOWAS is a group of 15 western African countries that focuses on political and economic challenges in west Africa.  In his speech, Secretary Blinken articulated a principle that defines the fresh approach of the Biden-Harris Administration to U.S. policy in Africa.  Simply and directly, he acknowledged that the United States can no longer expect to advance our global foreign policy priorities without the partnership of African governments, institutions, and peoples.  He said, and I quote: “Africa will shape the future—and not just the future of the people of Africa, but of the world.” 

-Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee

The ambassador also said regarding health issues that “at home and in Africa, one of our most urgent shared challenges is ending the COVID-19 pandemic and strengthening health security so that we are better prepared to respond to future outbreaks.”  

Ambassador Phee said the United States has sent more than 90 million doses to 48 African countries, along with more than $1.8 billion in COVID-19 assistance to prevent virus transmission, to improve case management, and to distribute emergency food and humanitarian assistance.   Ambassador Phee said after his trip to the region and exposure to the priorities of  “our partners, Secretary Blinken charged us with strengthening our commercial diplomacy so that American and African businesses—small and large—do more business together, across all sectors.  He urged us to accelerate efforts to fill the infrastructure gap that holds back many African economies by mobilizing foreign investment capital through the Development Finance Corporation, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and the U.S. private sector.  We are also working to expand opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises, women-owned businesses, and diaspora investments.”

On Security and U.S. Counter Terrorism Efforts  in Africa

The ambassador told Howard U students that she started her foreign service  career working primarily in the Arab world.  

“As you all know over the past 20 years, since 911, the United States has been engaged in counter terrorism activities and efforts in the Arab world and also south West Asia.  I was also involved in the ultimately unsuccessful effort to try and reach a political settlement in Afghanistan after 20 years of conflict there.  Those experiences have really deeply affected me and how I look at these issues, and I have been looking in particular recently at the challenges in the Sahel, and the fact that our efforts in the Sahel and those of the Sahalien governments and peoples and partners have not been effective as we would have hoped and are now threatening coastal Africa. So, I am trying to consider what can we learn from the 20 years of effort, and I think most individuals who have been involved  in that process have come to the conclusion that a primary, or in some cases,  a sole focus on security action and military action,  is insufficient in addressing  these problems. That these problems are rooted often in poor governments. It is polices by states that exclude certain actors, certain groups, certain communities. The problems also include economic challenges, environment challenges. Fights over resources driven by the climate change crisis. And also social problems, inclusion of communities, whether different tribes can live together, whether different religious groups can live together.  It is a really complex problem set. I think the take away is we really need to do more than just security action. Security action is necessary given the horrific conduct often of terrorists groups or violent extremist groups, but it is insufficient on its own. I also think we take away the lesson we can’t keep doing the same and expect different result.”

Diplomat  Phee was most recently the Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation. Prior to this, Phee  served as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of South Sudan from 2015-2017 under President Obama.  Earlier in her career,  Phee served as Director for Iraq at the National Security Council and as Senior Civilian Representative of the Coalition Provisional Authority to Maysan Province, Iraq.  She began her career in Amman, Jordan and also worked at U.S. Embassies in Cairo, Egypt and Kuwait City, Kuwait.  Ambassador Phee will have her diplomatic plate full in Africa amid multiple crisis there including the war in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, surging terrorism in the Sahel and Horn of Africa, and military coups  in Mali and Guinea last year. 

The ambassador must also step forward to help seek solutions to the crisis in Cameroon 

A student at the Howard University event asked ambassador Phee about the crisis in Cameroon and what will the Biden State Department do about it.  UN Secretary-General António Guterres  in January 2021 urged authorities in Cameroon to take steps to prosecute perpetrators behind two deadly attacks killing at least 10 people in the Anglophone provinces of the country.   Cameroonian soldiers  reportedly opened fire on villagers during a raid in the country’s southwest region.  The UN chief and other humanitarian organizations are concerned about persistent violence in the North-West and South-West regions, mainly affecting civilians.  Ambassador Phee hedged, then stated: 

“I would like our office to  work and focus more energy,  over my tenure,  to see if we can revive more on external diplomatic efforts and to encourage the government (in Cameroon) to create conditions for a dialogue”.