Addressing the Bureau of African Affairs staffing crisis

(a) In general The Assistant Secretary for Human Resources, in consultation with the Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, shall create a program to facilitate and expedite the hiring of qualified individuals to fill term-limited civil service positions in the Bureau of African Affairs of the Department. (b) Report Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall submit to the appropriate congressional committees an unclassified report that outlines the staffing challenges that exist in the Bureau of African Affairs. Such report shall include— (1) a comparative analysis of the Bureau of African Affairs’ direct hire staffing compared to the other regional bureaus, including— (A) the number of authorized positions per embassy at comparable posts and the number of staff per mission based domestically in the United States, to include Foreign Service Officers and civil servants; and (B) the number of vacant positions in the Bureau of African Affairs and the average number of bids per Bureau of African Affairs position; (2) the number of Bureau of African Affairs posts that qualify for the harshest environments in the Department’s Operating Environment score and the comparison to other regions; (3) an assessment on whether the Department’s hardship incentives are properly aligned with the posts that have the highest Operating Environment score; (4) the number of Bureau of African Affairs posts that lack key management personnel; (5) historic and ongoing efforts made by the Department to rectify the understaffing and consistent vacancies within the Bureau of African Affairs and whether they were successful; and (6) a detailed plan of forthcoming actions the Department will implement in the immediate future to rectify the consistent understaffing and vacancies in the Bureau of African Affairs.