By Bida Elly David
President Salva Kiir Mayardit on Thursday evening continued his earlier enterprise of revamping the government by shifts and gifts.
Ambassador James Morgan Pitia, a career diplomat, has earned President’s favour with a gift as a minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation.
Amb. Pitia reliefs Deng Dau Deng, who previously was then deputy, has been acting at the position after March 2023 fall-off of his boss, Mayiik Ayii Deng.
A presidential decree ushering Amb. Pitia to a new docket was aired on the state-run South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation (SSBC) radio and TV on Thursday.
“I, Salva Kiir Mayardit, President of the Republic of South Sudan, do here relieve Hon. Deng Dau Deng from his position as the deputy minister and acting minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation in the revitalized transitional government of national unity,” the decree reads in part.
However, the president didn’t advance any reason to the development, and he never offered Mr. Dau Deng any landing ground in the interim unity government.
Up to his new appointment, Amb. Pitia served in different portfolios in the country’s foreign missions, with the recent, to the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
He was at the same time accredited as the Permanent Representative of South Sudan to the African Union (AU) and a member of the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Committee of Ambassadors.
Before the Ethiopian, AU and IGAD assignments, Amb. Pitia served from 2014 to 2016as South Sudan’s deputy ambassador to Kenya.
Meanwhile, in 2012, he was the deputy head of mission of South Sudan embassy in New Delhi, India.
From 2009 to 2011, Pitia served as deputy head of mission in the Republic of Sudan, Jakarta, and Indonesia.
But above all, Amb. Morgan Pitia’s long diplomatic journey to greater heights as a career diplomat started way back in 2006, when he joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the then-republic of Sudan in Khartoum following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005.
Along the way, Ambassador Morgan has played great roles, notable among which is his bigger role in representing South Sudan in the international arena through the African Union.
Amb. Morgan, while with the African Union, pushed the Inter-governmental Authority for Development (IGAD) to ensure South Sudan got out of the 2013 bloodshed.
Through Amb. Morgan, the AU, in conjunction with IGAD, managed to restore peace after the brutal 2013 conflict, where insecurity claimed an estimated 400,000 lives.
Amb. Pitia also played a great role in the coordination of the South Sudan peace initiative in 2016 and made partners to gain trust in the young nation.