Noah Pitcher is a global politics correspondent for Today News Africa covering the U.S. government, United Nations, African Union, and other actors involved in international developments, political controversies, and humanitarian issues.
Henri Etoundi Essomba has held the position of Cameroon’s ambassador to the United States since he was appointed by President Paul Biya and assumed power in June of 2016.
He has been involved in diplomacy for decades. However, the majority of this experience was in Israel. He was Cameroon’s ambassador to Israel for 17 years before being appointed as Ambassador to the United States. There, he was also the Dean of the Diplomatic Corps. While Henri Etoundi Essomba was Cameroon’s Ambassador to Israel, the two nations maintained generally pleasant and cordial relations.
Prior to his career in diplomacy, Essomba pursued priesthood. He grew up believing that was the life he was called to and even went to seminary for a while. When God’s calling did not work out, he went to school for economics and joined Cameroon’s foreign ministry shortly thereafter.
Essomba has come under criticism in recent years. Some vocal Cameroonians in the United States asserted in 2021 that the Cameroon Embassy in Washington DC has been uncooperative, negligent and even potentially corrupt. Critics claim that under Essomba’s leadership, the embassy is often inept and unreachable. The doors are always shut and it often looks like a ghost town, a town that has completely been abandoned.
