There are few figures in Washington’s Africa policy circles who are as outspoken as Peter Pham, the Trump administration’s former special envoy to the Great Lakes region and, for a brief stint, the special envoy to the Sahel.
Pham is passionate about promoting U.S. foreign policy objectives in Africa and equally committed to doing whatever possible to curtail China’s growing influence on the continent. And through a complex web of interests, most notably as a fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank where he once ran the Africa program and now as a board member at Africell, a U.S.-government backed mobile telecom operator, many of his pursuits overlap with one another.