US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Thursday that David Satterfield, the outgoing US ambassador to Turkey, will take up the role of outgoing US Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman.
After his current visit to Ethiopia, where more than a year of war in the country’s Tigray region has killed an estimated tens of thousands of people, Feltman plans to leave his post.
During the visit, the Department of State said that Feltman met with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Thursday.
Adding that Feltman would continue to serve in an advisory role, Blinken said that the department had intended for Feltman’s appointment as special envoy to be less than a year.
A veteran of the US Foreign Service with more than four decades of experience, Satterfield has most recently served as US ambassador in Turkey between August 2019 and December 2021.
Blinken expressed, “Ambassador Satterfield’s decades of diplomatic experience and work amidst some of the world’s most challenging conflicts will be instrumental in our continued effort to promote a peaceful and prosperous Horn of Africa and to advance US interests in the region.”
Feltman assumed his post in April and quickly found himself in the middle of two major crises in Ethiopia and Sudan.
Even as conditions deteriorated, Ethiopian authorities repeatedly assured him and others they would seek a peaceful resolution to the country’s crisis.
