Administrator Samantha Power at the Swearing-in Ceremony for Keisha Effiom as Mission Director for Rwanda and Burundi

ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER: Monde [Muyangwa], thank you for that introduction. You always call me your boss in this setting - my friend, my partner, from whom I learn a lot.

This is great. The vibe is great. The energy is great. It's an incredible tribute to you and the family that you've built, the extended family, over a lifetime of service. We are incredibly fortunate to have here loved ones who've come - to friends, fans from all over the world.

I want to give a special welcome to John Bosco Barege, Burundi's Ambassador to the U.S. And Mathilde Mukantabana, Rwanda's Ambassador to Washington, who I think is joining us virtually. Yeah, thank you. Honorable colleagues, it is so good to have you. Keisha is going to play a key role, I think, in deepening the partnership with both Rwanda and Burundi. We're really excited about this.

Thanks to Ambassador [Eric] Kneedler. Again, it's great to hear the impression that Keisha has made already - just how invaluable she has made herself, not only within the mission, of course, but at the Embassy as a whole. Development is so central to what we are doing in both countries - it's at the epicenter of our bilateral relationship with both countries, so it's no surprise. But as they say, you don't read a book, a book reads you. And we can tell with the way an ambassador engages with our incoming Mission Directors, you know, just what the kind of bond can look like between USAID and the Chief of Mission. And definitely, we're off to a great start in Rwanda and Burundi.

Welcome, as well, on that note, to Ambassador [Lisa] Peterson, really grateful that you could join us and that you are finally leading the mighty U.S. government team in Burundi.

I'm told, and we feel the energy in this room, but I'm actually told - and I think this is a world record - that there are watch parties in at least four different countries.

So, let me recognize Keisha's husband and her two children, Zoë and Vincent Jr - her husband, Vincent, and Vincent Jr. You know, this is a family commitment. I was talking to Zoë and Vincent Jr. about their schooling in Rwanda, which of course they've gotten to do for a couple of years. It's not easy, you know, descending into a new country and culture - even if Rwanda is at the vanguard of bringing the NBA to Africa. Vincent Jr. is good for Rwanda. Really just - Zoë and Vincent Jr., thank you for being so open hearted and being so supportive for your mom and her dreams, which I'll come to. Vincent Sr., thank you. Again, this wouldn't be happening without the three of you. We all feel incredibly grateful to you for being part of this service. Thank you.

I also want to thank Keisha's mother Loyce and her sister Vyundra, who have helped shape Keisha in so many foundational ways. And I want to acknowledge two very important people who could not be here today. The first is Keisha's brother Thomas, Jr, who passed away several years ago. As Keisha's older brother by 17 years, Thomas had a foundational impact on Keisha's life. We'll also say that the sibling squabbles, I gather, with Vyundra, provided fodder for Keisha's early days of diplomacy - planting the skills that would come in handy, "mediation" being her second name. The second is Keisha's father, Thomas Sr., who played a pivotal role in helping launch her career in the Foreign Service. I'll come back to Thomas Sr. and his impact and his words to live by, I think, for all of us.

Keisha was born right here in Washington, DC, as we know - we see her foundational mentors and their impact in her earliest teacher. She is the youngest of three children again, the oldest brother older by - or I should say, the next oldest child 10 years older. So, the miracle baby - and her parents raised her to be open, to be curious, and I think, above all, to be kind.

Keisha's father, Thomas Sr. was a longtime journalist. He loved striking up conversations with strangers, listening to their stories, pumping them for information about their interests. And he passed on this curiosity, and this warmth, and this sense that nobody's a stranger, to Keisha.

Keisha's mother Loyce, for her part, worked for more than two decades in the Department of Education. She raised her daughters to treat others the way you want to be treated - and her son as well. She drew heavily from her faith to lead with love and respect. "No matter where they come from, or what they look like," she says, "people are people."

"People are people." It is perhaps the sentiment in many ways that has driven Keisha's career, and desire to fight for the dignity of all people, no matter who they are, where they happen to be born, who they love. A desire to lift up the most marginalized communities.

Keisha was a star on her high school's mock trial team. She studied legal communications at the great Howard University and dreamt initially of going actually to law school. We've got some Howard grads in the audience? We might have grads from some other HBCUs. The Howard solidarity is something that one encounters everywhere in the world.

So, she had these dreams initially of doing something in the legal profession. She has a gift, I gather, for argument. But upon graduation, she took a job as a Contracting Officer at the Department of Justice, hoping to dabble, to get a few years' work experience and eventually to pursue public service as a lawyer. Public service was always an inevitability, I gather. But what was supposed to be a bridge job, an exposure job, turned into a career - lucky for us, one that eventually led her to USAID.

It was a DOJ mentor named Sheila Bumpass - whom some of you may know, clearly - who inspired Keisha to apply for a job with USAID. She sold Keisha on the opportunity to grow in her job and to have a real impact in the world. Keisha remembers her words, "It's time for you to spread your wings."

So, Keisha joined the Office of Acquisitions and Assistance for USAID's Bureau of Global Health based here in Washington. In 2008, though, she went on her first TDY to Kenya to evaluate an education contract that she had worked on. It was her first time in Africa, and her first time seeing the tangible effect of the work that she had been doing. At a school, she saw young children receiving notebooks and pencils and sitting at desks that she and her team had helped fund. She returned home with just one question - a question some of us ask ourselves from time to time: "What the hell am I still doing in the United States?"

Keisha did a couple more of these temporary trips, these so-called TDYs, including one to Rwanda, before she was offered a long-term assignment to Abuja, Nigeria, to cover for the Mission's OAA director. Keisha knew that this would be the start of a fully international career and she was wary of how her mother would react to the idea of her youngest child, her miracle baby, moving off to Africa, a place that she had only seen on TV.

So, Keisha approached her father, and what he said she has never forgotten. "If that's what you want to do," he said, "and you think you can make a difference in the world, then go fly, baby. Go fly." Keisha credits her dad, who sadly passed away three weeks after she got to Abuja, with the courage and the strength that she needed not just to spread her wings, but to strengthen them and to use them.

Keisha's enduring love of Africa led her to another enduring love, for it was in Abuja that she met her husband Vincent, a stylin' Nigerian-American consultant who was drawn to her warmth, her smile, her deep commitment to making the world better, and her bling. You'll see her earrings when she steps up to the microphone, which I'm convinced are connected to the Sustainable Development Goals, which, she had not seen the resemblance. The colors are a little different, but I think deep down she was buying the bling version of the SDGs.

What Vincent said about Keisha is, "she was an American woman with an African soul." The two quickly fell in love, running up hundreds of dollars in international phone bills as they talked for hours and hours every day. And their wedding, I gather, was planned by a former Mission Director of USAID/Nigeria.

Keisha served as a Contracting Officer in Nigeria, Liberia, Tanzania, and West Africa, and had a tremendous impact everywhere she went. In Tanzania, she played a key role in developing and implementing the Mission's first strategy focused on empowering women - one of USAID's first strategies across all of its missions codifying the importance of gender empowerment in advancing our development goals. She has also been an award-winning champion of partnerships with U.S.-based small businesses. Even when USAID/Ghana saw its budget slashed by 35 percent back in 2020, Keisha led the Mission to exceed their annual small business targets. And she is a two-time winner of the Agency-wide Small Business Contracting Officer Award for her work in 2019 and 2023.

But of all the accolades, Keisha - maybe her singular attribute is - and the singular feature of her reputation - is as a uniquely effective trust and relationship builder within the Mission, with government officials - sometimes in difficult bilateral relationships - and with our partners who implement our programs.

Her former colleague and longtime mentor, Ambassador Sharon Cromer, remembers Keisha introducing her to a new implementing partner in Tanzania with so much enthusiasm that Ambassador Cromer thought that the two must be long-lost friends. She later saw Keisha introducing that same partner to colleagues across the embassy at a social event that evening. As Ambassador Cromer put it, "there were no arm's-length dealings with partners for Keisha. Once an implementing partner signed an award they became a family member, part of the USAID team."

Keisha's ability to build trust was on full display when she became Deputy Mission Director in Rwanda and Burundi in 2022. Her colleagues said that she would go cubicle to cubicle to greet people, never too busy for a conversation. They remember her willingness to advocate for them, to mentor them, and to help them grow. They remember her fierce advocacy for our local staff, or our Foreign Service Nationals - our Rwandan and Burundian team members.

In 2022, she gathered the Rwanda Mission senior management for an entire week to hammer out the Mission's FSN empowerment plan. As Mission Director Jonathan Kamin put it, "there were so many groups with so many different interests in that room: Americans and Rwandans, Foreign Service Nationals and Foreign Service Officers. She led from behind, knowing when to weigh in and when she was needed to break a logjam."

Keisha helped promote several current Foreign Service Nationals to fully recognize and compensate them for their high-level duties - for the work they were already doing. She created an FSN Advisory Committee to advise the Mission's Front Office on sensitive issues across both countries. Thanks to her, it is now standard practice in both Rwanda and Burundi that on every single high-level visit, an FSN is in the car with the principal, briefing them on key issues. And she played a key role in appointing a Foreign Service National to head up the Burundi office's $25 million HIV AIDS program, making Burundi one of, if not the first USAID outposts to have an FSN leading this incredibly prominent and important work on the ground.

Keisha's extraordinary ability to build trust makes her uniquely suited to head up USAID's teams in Rwanda and Burundi. She takes the reins at challenging times for both offices, but times as well where there are great opportunities.

Rwanda, as everyone knows, has seen extraordinary development successes in the 30 years since the genocide in 1994. In the last decade alone, malaria rates have dropped a staggering 85 percent - due in part, we hope with the support of the President's Malaria Initiative, but mostly to Rwandan communities' fierce, fierce commitment to strengthening their health sector. We could go ailment by ailment, and the development progress is off the charts.

Education, too, has seen incredible gains. Even in the wake of widespread school closures in Rwanda in 2020 and 2021, Rwanda registered huge gains in literacy. Today, 87 percent of third graders read at grade level, compared with just 54 percent in 2021. 54 percent to 87 percent in that short a time. Rwandan communities have continued to invest heavily in their young people, both through strengthening education and through placing an emphasis on job creation.

Under Keisha's leadership, USAID will continue to build on partnerships that have contributed to these successes. We will be working to help the Rwandan people lower maternal and child mortality, train health workers, drive economic growth, particularly for smallholder farmers, and continue their successful efforts to protect Rwanda's incredible and unique wildlife.

But Keisha will also need, of course, to engage Rwandan communities on some of the more challenging issues where progress has been slower: limited political space, a difficulty for opposition to gain traction, as the recent election, when the President obtained more than 99 percent of the vote, perhaps testifies to the difficulty, what the NGOs face, in doing what can be incredibly important work for helping grow Rwanda's checks and balances and strengthen its institutions. Keisha will help us navigate these challenging issues, recognizing the very strong connection empirically, over time, between good governance - accountable governance - and lasting development progress.

Burundi, too, is a country on the move. We look forward to working with the government and the people to help maximize enormous potential. An ongoing fuel crisis continues to cause regular power outages, slowing economic recovery and development progress, torrential rains - sometimes it feels Burundi just can't get a break. But what USAID does is it looks to find those openings to step in and to catalyze progress where we can. With an opening and some more space for civil society, part, again, of what our mission will do is train organizations on how to better advocate and organize for their goals, working toward the day where everyone's voices can be heard.

To succeed in Keisha's new role, she will use, I'm sure, all of the tools in her formidable diplomatic and development toolkit. She will be bringing together a diverse range of people, from government officials to civil society leaders to ordinary citizens. She will have to navigate the politics and the different viewpoints that are sometimes diametrically opposed to her own or to those of the U.S. government. She will have to unite communities that live with the generational scars of trauma in both countries - communities that are still struggling to heal, and sometimes communities that don't air some of those struggles. Most importantly, she will need to continue to nurture the trust and confidence of our staff, our partners, and the communities we serve, and we know she is a first team all-star in doing just that.

We have every confidence in Keisha, and her whole life preparing her for this incredibly important leadership role in such really important partner countries. As one colleague put it, "Keisha shows us what is possible when we lead with integrity, with empathy, and with grace. She is the best of USAID."

Keisha, congratulations. I now have the pleasure of swearing you in as our next Mission Director to Rwanda and Burundi.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.