Washington, DC — The White House is expected to announce as early as this week the appointment of Constance Berry Newman as assistant secretary of State for African Affairs. Newman currently is in charge of Africa at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
The assistant secretary for Africa in the State Department is considered a pivotal post for Africa policymaking, since the Department's under secretaries, who are more senior, as well as the deputy secretary and secretary of state himself, have broader global responsibilities. The assistant secretary post is currently filled on an acting basis by Charles Snyder, a veteran diplomat who served as the senior deputy assistant secretary in the Africa Bureau before Walter Kansteiner resigned as assistant secretary in October.
The pending announcement comes amid speculation over a shift in another key African policymaking job, the senior director for Africa at the National Security Council, the body that coordinates foreign policy for the president. Jendayi Frazer, who has held the post since President Bush took office in January 2001, is believed to be in line for nomination as the next U.S. ambassador to South Africa.
If it occurs, the appointment would represent an unexpected shift, since the State Department had already settled on Katherine H. Peterson for the Pretoria post. The selection of Peterson, a career foreign service officer who currently directs the Foreign Service Institute and was formerly ambassador to Lesotho, upset Africa hands in the Department and outside who had assumed the prestigious South Africa assignment would go to Johnnie Carson, another career officer who completed a three-year term as ambassador to Kenya last year and served previously as principal deputy assistant secretary for Africa and as ambassador to Zimbabwe and Uganda. Carson is currently senior vice president of the National Defense University.
Newman, who was named to the post of USAID assistant administrator for Africa in 2001 by President Bush, held high-level posts in previous Republican administrations. She was director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management from 1989 to 1992 during the first Bush administration and has also been assistant secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, commissioner and vice chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and director of VISTA.
From 1992 to 2000, Newman served as under secretary, the number two position, at the Smithsonian Institution. Earlier, she co-founded the Newman and Hermanson Company.
According to several of Newman's associates, she had initially been disinclined to leave her job at USAID, where she believed she had an important role in promoting African development, but was persuaded that the Africa Bureau at the State Department needed strong leadership, especially going into the final year of the president's term in office.
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According to State Department officials, the leading candidate to replace Kansteiner had been Nancy Powell, the current U.S. ambassador to Pakistan. Powell was the principal deputy assistant secretary in the Africa Bureau during the final months of the Clinton administration and served as acting assistant secretary before Kansteiner took over in June of 2001. While Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage reportedly wanted Powell in the Africa job, others in the administration are said to have opposed her leaving Islamabad or disagreed over who should succeed her in the highly sensitive post.
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