CFA President Meets with New Permanent Representative to the African Union Mission in Washington

CFA President Melvin Foote met yesterday with Her Excellency, Dr. Arikana Chihombori Quao, the new African Union Ambassador to the United States. Ambassador Chihombori succeeds Ambassador Amina Salum Ali, who opened the AU Washington Mission and served for seven years as the Permanent Representative.

Prior to assuming the prestigious AU Office, Ambassador Chihombori, who hails originally from Zimbabwe, owned and operated an extensive medical practice in Nashville, Tennessee, that focused largely on poor and indigent black communities.

The meeting yesterday took place in the African Union Mission located in Northwest Washington, where they discussed CFA's African Healthcare Infrastructure initiative, and a wide range of other issues and topics concerning Africa and the United States. Melvin Foote was very pleased with the meeting and is encouraged by Ambassador Chihombori's emergence as the AU Ambassador to Washington. Said Foote, "Dr. Chihombori is actually an old friend! We have worked together over many years on African healthcare issues and on issues concerning the mobilization of the African Diaspora. She is very dynamic, hard-working, strategic and motivated. For sure she will elevate the presence of the African Union in Washington and across the United States."