Anyone in the Diaspora who has ever had the misfortune of doing business with most African embassies or missions abroad will tell you it is simply a nightmare.
With the United States (I live in California) as the backdrop for this piece, my investigations reveal similar patterns around the world - a dysfunctional maze of bureaucracy.
Stories abound of rude officials, incompetent and undiplomatic. And at the end, you wonder why they exist at all.
Try calling or emailing any of these embassies and you would be fortunate to ever have someone come to the phone or respond to your email.
Return your call? Forget it.
More often than not, citizens of these African countries have to physically show up at the embassy offices to get anything done. Even in this digital age.
In writing this piece, a diasporan told me that it is easier to get through the proverbial eye of the needle than it is to obtain a piece of document out of one of these missions abroad.
Most worrisome are stories of shakedowns of their own citizens by embassy officials.
When a particular mission here in America decided some years ago to farm out the processing of passports to private companies ostensibly to decongest self-inflicted bottlenecks, it got worse - with horror tales of gross incompetence.
Conversely, my investigations also revealed that embassy staff at one of these African missions are
routinely owed salary arrears.
And you wonder how they survive.
I am told that staffers invariably resort to self-help - bribes from vulnerable individuals, side hustles such as buying essential goods and shipping them back home for small profits and even laundering monies for corrupt politicians and senior officials.
Now compare and contrast the role of African diplomats posted overseas to the role of their foreign counterparts serving at duty posts across Africa.
In Africa, ambassadors of a country such as the United States and Eurozone countries wield enormous power and influence.
They are literally on first names basis with African presidents and prime ministers. I am reliably told that many an African head of state dread those ominous phone calls from ambassadors of these ‘powerful’ countries.
Recently in Pretoria, the newly posted US ambassador to South Africa, Leo Brent Bozell III wasted no time in engaging in a spat with his hosts.
He told the South Africans that he ‘didn’t care’ about South African court rulings on the struggle song: ‘Kill the Boer’ and that as far as the US is concerned, the phrase constitutes hate speech.
By the way, Ambassador Bozell is a right-wing conservative appointed last December by President Donald Trump Trump to checkmate the ruling ANC’s perceived oppression of the country’s Afrikaans population.
In Nigeria, I have equally watched with mixed interest, the recent announcement by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of his approval of 65 ambassadors-designate.
Thirty-one of them are political appointees, with names of his controversial acolytes such as Femi Fani-Kayode and Reno Omokri.
And as much as Tinubu is well within his powers to appoint anyone, he so desires to represent his country overseas, his choices have ignited a firestorm of resentment.
But, observers who had criticized him for acting rather tentatively in filling the ambassadorial positions in the first place, believe that he did not do justice to this critical presidential assignment.
Integral to such discussions about ambassadorial appointments, for many, is that there is a somewhat overinflated notion of what ambassadors do.
Or, how important that they really are in the grand scheme of things.
In a country with a runaway inflation rate, mass unemployment and a bleak economic outlook, it is only wise to question the rationale for the appointment of such a large number of persons essentially for political patronage.
Ambassadors are usually portrayed as some oleaginous characters who spend their time playing golf, attending black tie dinners, and like some diplomat told me, “having quiet entre nous encounters with all shades of characters.
“And judging from the way some political appointees initially misunderstand the job, they are less than attuned to the actual job”.
In conclusion, I cannot help but question the whole idea of maintaining so many diplomatic missions abroad - that are largely ineffective, underfunded, and poorly managed.
In today’s global environment and in a changing world order, Africa has to approach the diplomatic representation as warfare. Short and simple.
No more niceties of the past.
After all, the rest of the world don’t give a flying fig about the continent.
Africa has what the world needs. Let them come get it. On our terms.
Abroad, Africa needs her A-team. Anywhere it has presence. Not some upstarts. With a demoralized staff.
In today’s world, perception is everything. Perception quickly turns into reality.
What every African country needs abroad is a lean and mean team of diplomats.
Diplomats who know their onions. The ones who mean business.