Washington, DC
Remarks
ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER: Thank you so much, Monde [Muyangwa].
Thank you Ambassador [Elsie] Kanza, for being here, for your remarks, for being so clear about what you want. I’m pro-that. My favorite expression is “What are we for?” Well, you know what you’re for, and there’s a great marriage of minds on much of our shared agenda. I did hear through the grapevine that you once provided Tanzanian fried snacks to a group of USAID staff during World Bank week. And I have left an urgent note with my schedulers to set an in person meeting for us as soon as possible.
Thank you as well to Ambassador [Michael] Battle. As some of you know, Ambassador Battle has an incredibly distinguished background as a theologian, and is unbelievably knowledgeable about everything from the civil rights struggle in this country to how to get things done in the U.S. government. But what I might love most about Ambassador Battle is his theological devotion to USAID, and his belief that we really are, as he put it, “the ground game for American foreign policy,” and durability to meet people where they are in that spirit of partnership and deference and humility is a major asset to what we do globally as a country. Ambassador Battle, since you’ve gotten there, already an incredible relationship between the team and the Embassy Front Office is going to a whole new level.
Thanks, also, to the person who was chargé when you were here – DCM [Robert] Raines, who did an amazing job shepherding us around the country on our visit there not long ago.
Kate – I don’t know if Kate is joining us, I think she’s in transit, maybe, already to Pakistan, knowing Kate. But some of you heard – and Craig, maybe a little sick of hearing – about how Kate walks on water. Indeed she’ll be performing a water walking ritual in front of us here at USAID before too long, because DCM Raines and Ambassador Battle both say they’ve seen it – they’ve actually seen her walk on water. She has done an amazing job as mission director, and we got to see that up close. There are so many aspects to her legacy that Craig is the perfect person to institutionalize and expand. Every USAID program in Tanzania is co-led by a Tanzanian team member – every single USAID program. And so many of those programs – from public-private partnerships like m-mama, which I’ll come back to, to interagency initiatives like PEPFAR – serve as USAID’s success stories globally, and honestly, models for other Missions looking to achieve similar transformational progress.
I want to welcome Craig’s loved ones tuning in from around the world. Welcome to Craig’s family who was able to be here today.
His wife Svetlana, who is also a model public servant and has done so much for USAID. Svetlana is going to, of course, be coming with Craig to Tanzania, and will continue her important, important work for HCTM helping onboard new foreign service officers. While some people would like some time to shill when they get to a new country, settle down and get to know the local scene – Svetlana is most excited about there being no gap, and getting to continue his work seamlessly. Grateful for that spirit and the energy you bring to USAID every day.
Sonya is here, their daughter, who will graduate from the International School in Tanzania during Craig’s tenure as Mission Director. That makes her one of the rare Foreign Service kids graduating from the same school where she started kindergarten. Some things happened in between, but that is pretty awesome.
The Hart family has an important personal mission. I expect Craig to be successful in everything that he seeks to do, but this one I, unfortunately expect, to be an abject failure – which is: one of Sonya’s memories from when she was younger was that Craig actually lost his wedding ring in the ocean swimming, they were swimming together as a family. For anyone who has had that happen, even temporarily, it’s a harrowing experience. The family is determined to find the wedding ring. They’re going back to that very spot, and after fruitless hours and days of hunting all those years ago, they are still determined to bring the wedding ring home.
One creature that they are bringing with them to their new home is Craig and Svetlana’s cocker spaniel, Rex, who joined the family in Vietnam – and who once got the family, I gather, through airport customs in record time by marking his territory all over their belongings.
So the family is ready to roll.
Craig was born in Worcester – see I can say that, other USAID Administrators might say “WOR-chester,” WOOSTER! – but spent his formative years in Bronston, Kentucky, a blue-collar town with a population of fewer than 3,000 people. With his Bermuda shorts and neon-colored t-shirts, his thick Boston accent sticking out in a sea of Southern twangs, Craig was as far from a small-town Kentucky boy as you could get. According to his childhood friend Terry, “his fashion sense was… ahead of its time.” Terry, is going to be considering a career in diplomacy sometime soon.
And yet, Craig was quite popular, probably due to what we all know to be his disarming personality.
He was eager from there to expand his horizons and attended the University of Kentucky, becoming the first in his family to attend college. He became a resident advisor and later Residency Director and loved that his job helped connect him with students from different countries and backgrounds.
Craig loved being an RA so much that he moved to Vermont to complete a Masters of Education in Higher Education and Student Affairs Administration, before taking a job at Wheaton College in his native Massachusetts. Eventually, he decided to take his passion for education abroad, joining the Peace Corps and traveling, fatefully, to Eastern Russia to teach English.
In Russia, Craig was once again a novelty – but once again, a popular one. Timur, Craig’s former student turned stepson, remembers that he was a “big, shiny American – which none of us had ever seen.” Think of the time back then! The students only knew America from the movies – scenes of New York skyscrapers and the Hollywood sign – and Craig had to explain to them that he was actually from southern Kentucky, where skyscrapers were few and far between. “I’m from Bronston,” he’d say, and the kids would inquire: “What’s Bronston?”
Craig exposed his students to more than just tales of small-town American life. Every time he’d travel to a different country, he’d bring back stacks of books for his students to read – books that he hoped would expand their horizons. He eventually won a grant for a resource center that brought in the school’s first two computers – imagine the lifeline that that was for that community – the first time that many had even used the internet.
Eastern Russia was also where Craig met Svetlana, who he wooed by taking her dancing every weekend at the Gornyak House of Culture, renowned for its disco music. After his service, they stayed with the Peace Corps office in Russia until 2002, when Putin expelled the Peace Corps from the country. Craig, Svetlana, and Timur were forced to relocate to Armenia – where they remained until Craig joined USAID’s Mission in Georgia in 2005.
Since then, Craig has traveled the world with the Agency – serving in Georgia, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Washington, and of course most relevant, Tanzania, back in 2013.
Craig worked closely with the then-Tanzanian government, including President [Jakaya] Kikwete, to dedicate USAID funds to the priorities set by the government at the time – agriculture, energy, and education. And he played a key role in finding creative ways to help local organizations spearhead those programs when few were able to partner directly with USAID – a challenge we are still managing, of course, today.
One of those organizations was SAGCOT Center Limited, which was doing extraordinary work to help smallholder farmers in southern Tanzania increase their yields of crops like soy, tea, and sugarcane. This was crucial work at a time when nearly a quarter of Tanzanians were undernourished. While the Mission was beginning to examine ways to simplify USAID’s risk assessment processes, Craig worked directly with the contracting officer on another solution in the meantime – a fixed-amount award of $25,000 that would strengthen their administrative and procurement processes. That award, and the changes it facilitated, resulted in one of the Mission’s earliest formal awards to a local Tanzanian organization. Today, all these years later, we are still working with SAGCOT to bolster food security and agricultural advancement across southern Tanzania – and these fixed amount awards help other local organizations across the world partner with USAID.
Craig has also had to deal with his fair share of crises. Just three years into his posting in Georgia, he had what we might say was his second brush with Vladimir Putin, when Russia invaded Georgia in the summer of 2008 – and he worked with what is now the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance to help 130,000 internally displaced people access emergency food, water, and medical care. And in the summer of 2021, when I had the chance to work very closely with Craig, Kabul fell while Craig was serving as Acting Assistant Administrator for the Asia Bureau. He became irreplaceable – the calmest, steadiest, most dedicated public servant to the United States, and above all to our staff on the ground – helping coordinate the evacuation of our Afghan national and American staff, urging partner governments to help take in more Afghan refugees fleeing the Taliban, and again, being such a calm, wise, and steady force back here in Washington. I know Peter now has a chance to work with Craig in a different capacity through the Africa Bureau, but Peter – our Mission Director there – and Craig worked hand in glove.
Craig’s impact extends to the people he worked with, as well – especially local staff. In Georgia, he helped Georgian members of his team secure funding to take academic courses in pursuit of advanced degrees. He continued advocating for Foreign Service Nationals as Deputy Assistant Administrator of the Asia Bureau, where he was the Front Office’s “FSN Champion” – Foreign Service National Champion. And he worked with HCTM and our Missions in India and Vietnam to break down logistical barriers preventing more Foreign Service Nationals from assuming senior positions.
Everywhere he went above and beyond to build camaraderie and trust among his team – most notably through Craig and Svetlana’s now-famous Kentucky Derby watch parties. Svetlana has thrown herself into learning how to make Kentucky classics like bourbon-pecan pie, bourbon meatballs, and burgoo stew – and together, she and Craig put together a spread large enough to feed the nearly 100 people who would show up from the Mission and the wider Embassy. Ambassador Battle, don’t get any ideas – they are there to work, to do USAID work. These were parties to remember – with a real horse for the kids to ride, a “best hat” competition, and, of course, an off-key group rendition of the Derby classic “My Old Kentucky Home.”
When Craig returns to the Mission, he’ll bring with him not just funny hats, but years of experience helping this Agency create real change for communities across the world. He takes the reins, as has been said, at an optimistic time for Tanzania – at a time of great change in the world and the region – and a time of real deepening and strengthening of the U.S.-Tanzania partnership.
Together, in the last six decades, we’ve built roads and highways. We have helped prevent an estimated 1.6 million Tanzanian deaths that might have been lost to HIV/AIDS. We have helped Tanzania’s farmers nearly double their productivity. We’ve focused on helping Tanzania do what every Tanzanian wishes for most – to transition from aid to trade, to help them invest as well in their young people, and as the Ambassador said, to engage nontraditional partners – especially within the private sector.
Craig will help continue this work, equipped with the $1.1 billion that the United States plans to invest in Tanzania over the next five years. He’ll build on the powerful health work we’ve done by bringing in nontraditional partners, following in the footsteps of m-mama, which – in partnership with Vodafone and volunteer community drivers – has helped more than 25,000 mothers and newborns receive emergency care in what is arguably the most dangerous moments of their lives. Now that Tanzania is a new Feed the Future country, he’ll build on our historic food security work, strengthening partnerships like the one I got to see firsthand with the Tanzanian Horticulture Association, which has helped horticulture exports grow twelve-fold since 2004. And I know this is a major area of investment for the government and for the President Samia, and one of her key priorities – dramatically enhancing agricultural productivity. And he’ll build on the efforts that he helped catalyze, ten years ago as a Program Director – bringing more local companies and organizations in partnership with USAID, and using more and more of our resources to support the incredible work those organizations are already doing on the ground.
I can’t think of – and I know by now none of you can think of – any person than Craig to represent this Agency in a country with so much promise, and at such a vital inflection point. Thank you, Craig. Thank you Sonya for disrupting your highschool years – and I hope it feels like coming home in some respect. Thank you Svetlana for all the sacrifices you all have made to make Craig’s contributions possible. And thanks to all of you for taking on this new family adventure where you can make such a profound difference in such an important country with people who have all the dynamism and ingenuity in the world, and just need the occasional helping hand to have that unlocked.
Thank you so much and now, it’s my pleasure to swear in Craig Hart as the newest Mission Director for USAID’s Mission in Tanzania.