President Donald Trump’s top diplomat for Africa on Wednesday moved to sooth anxious senators about State Department staff cuts as the administration moves to access the continent’s minerals to compete with China.
Jonathan Pratt, senior official at the Bureau of African Affairs, said he was able to retain key staffers. Pratt made the comments during a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health Policy focused on U.S. partnerships in Africa.
“I am also very concerned about staffing, as you can imagine,” Pratt told Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, the subcommittee’s ranking member. “We’re very much building this plane as we fly.”
A former ambassador to Djibouti, Pratt noted that he was recently promoted after Troy Fitrell retired last month, right as the Trump administration laid off about 1,300 staffers at State.
