Breaking News: Gambia’s Ex-Foreign Sect. Sidi Sanneh Wins Top US Int’l. Corporate Job

 

BY EBRIMA G. SANKAREH, Editor-In-Chief

 

Sidi M. Sanneh, DynCorp International Program Manager

The Gambia’s former Foreign Secretary Mr. Sidi Sanneh has been appointed Program Manager-Contingency and Logistics Division of the Falls Church, Virginia headquartered DynCorp International LLC, a worldly reputable multi-faceted major Defense and State Departments’ security contractor with an annual budget in excess of $2.8billion. As Program Manager-Contingency and Logistics Division, Mr. Sanneh is responsible for managing and directing the operations of this vital arm of DynCorp International LLC.

                 Sources close to the company say Mr. Sanneh’s appointment is in line with DynCorp’s expansion program in Africa and that he would help locate among three major African cities where the Corporation’s Africa Head Office would be located. And until that is determined, our unassailable sources reveal, Sidi Sanneh will be based in the state of Virginia for his orientation and other logistical preparations given DynCorp’s global reputation as an excellent military, aviation and police operations power house. Asked when Mr. Sanneh will take up his high profile appointment making him the first out of the continent as a senior member of its management, our sources say, Mr. Sanneh was aboard a Virginia-bound jet from the Senegalese capital Dakar. It was there that he last served as Gambian Ambassador with concurrent accreditation to Mali and Burkina Faso until he allegedly ran afoul of the dictator Yahya Jammeh in the prelude to the alleged foiled coup of 2006. Since then, Mr. Sanneh has been in Dakar for what many attribute to safety reasons following the disappearance of former NIA Director Daba Marena, the arrest and incommunicado detention of the late Works Permanent Secretary, Lamin Sanneh and several others. 

A distinguished personality of timber and calibre, one of the finest minds in the gallery of Gambian intellectuals, Sidi Sanneh was born in Banjul in 1947 to the legendary Criminal Investigation Department’s Chief Inspector of Police Morro Sanneh and Ajaratou Mallen Gaye. Described by many as a star student during his formative years at The Gambia High School, Sanneh trail blazed through that school’s corridors leaving behind a trail of impressive scholarly record. Graduating from The Gambia high school he briefly worked at the Standard Chartered Bank, then called the Bank of West Africa Ltd. before he immigrated to the States a year later and enrolled at Lenox High School in Lenox, Massachusetts and then matriculated to Wilberforce University. He is a 1972 Economics & Political Science Honours graduate of Wilberforce University in Ohio- the oldest private African American School in the United States. He holds a Masters degree in Agricultural Economics from the prestigious University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1975 before he climaxed to the worldly reputable M.I.T-Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he obtained a postgraduate Diploma in Urban Executive Management. He also holds diplomas from the University of Sussex, United Kingdom, the Free University of Belgium and the IMF Institute. A good social mixer, Sanneh is bilingual-French and English and writes so well.    

Until he returned to his native Gambia in 1977 to become a Human Resource Planner under the government of deposed President Sir Dawda K. Jawara, Sidi Sanneh was Community Development Block Grant Coordinator, City of Madison-Dane County Consortium; tasked with management of funds provided by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development to the City of Madison and County of Dane Governments for the implementation of urban development projects including the Capital Mall and the Williamson Street Beautification Projects, both located in the City of Madison. He is a loving man, an affable fine fellow blessed with a wonderful family, a glaring reflection of the man’s measure. His eldest daughter, Fatuma Sanneh is a George Town University graduate and is the Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State for African Affairs at the U.S. State Department in Washington, DC while Pap Morro Sanneh his eldest child; an economist, works for a giant pharmaceutical firm in the States.

In 1980 Sanneh rose to the rank of Rural Development Project Manager, Department of Agriculture, Gambia Government; responsible for the management of a $3M IDA-World Bank, financed project to provide financing to farmer-owned Cooperative Unions for crop purchases, including agricultural inputs such as hand or animal-drawn implements. Between 1983-1989, Sidi Sanneh was Manager, IDA-ADB-EU financed Education Project and Under Secretary, Ministry of Education; responsible for the management of over $15M of resources of the International Development Association (World Bank) African Development Fund and the European Union for the construction of educational facilities, instructional materials, teacher training and staff development.  He personally established the Projects Co-ordination Unit of the Ministry of Education, which is still in existence; an innovative way of managing efficiently multiple source financing of a single sector; co-coordinated and contributed significantly in the formulation of Gambia 's 15-Year Education Policy (1988-2003), deputized for the Permanent Secretary in the management of the Ministry of Education.

Between 1989-1992, Sidi Sanneh was Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance & Economic Affairs; assisting the Permanent Secretary in the management of The Gambia's finances and economy; fiscal policy management and an integral part of the Economic Management Team of The Gambia; acting as Deputy Governor of multilateral financing institutions such as the Breton Woods Institutions, the African Development Bank and the Islamic Development Banks; developed loan negotiations skills and participated in loan negotiations with institutions such as the World Bank, African Development Bank, Islamic Bank and IFAD.

In 1992 he climaxed to the African Development Bank in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, where until 1995 he served as Assistant to the Executive Director, providing technical advice and administrative and management support as member of its Board of Directors and in his role as policy maker. In 1995 he rose to the rank of Alternative Executive Director and Adviser of the Bank, acted as a Resident Alternative to the Executive Director responsible for both providing technical and administrative support as well as sitting on the Board of Directors and its constituent Committees while also responsible for overseeing the management of the Bank in close collaboration with its President and his Senior Management Team. He served in this capacity until 1989 when he climaxed to the pinnacle as Executive Director, African Development Bank, Abidjan, Cote Voire a job he held until 2001. As ADB Executive Director Mr. Sanneh ably represented the interests of the constituent countries of The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Sudan on the Board of Directors of the Bank responsible for overseeing the over-all management of Africa’s premier development finance institution with over billions of dollars of subscribed capital employing over one thousand five hundred professionals with wide ranging expertise.

At the conclusion of his tenure Sidi Sanneh was in 2002 appointed Senior Resource Mobilization Adviser, United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Regional Bureau for Africa tasked with the development of a coherent and effective strategy to leverage the limited resources available to the Core resources of UNDP-Africa Bureau by targeting ADB-financed projects-both national and multi national to possible UNDP involvement in their management. He held this job until 2004 when Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh appointed him Minister of Foreign Affairs to the surprise and consternation of many who love and admire Sanneh’s brilliance and career advances, an appointment he probably now lives to regret. That was then, but this now and Mr. Sanneh’s new job is by far more lucrative than all jobs he previously held a lesson for Yahya Jammeh and his rat racing officials that eventually, The Gambia may end up with no competent technocrats to run the country and that international agencies especially, the western world want well trained and highly qualified people like Sidi Sanneh and we wish him the best in his new assignment.    

 

DynCorp International At A Glance (Visit www.Dyn-intl.com for details)

 

Headquarters: Falls Church, VA.

Employees: More than 14,600 in 33 countries, including 400 at offices at Fort Worth Alliance Airport

Annual revenue: $2.08 billion

Ownership and unit control: About 56 percent controlled by Veritas Capital Management, New York; 10 percent owned by Iridian Asset Management, Westport, Conn.

Stock: Ticker: DCP; trades on New York Stock Exchange

Revenue: $2.08 billion in 2007, $1.97 billion in 2006

Net income: $27.02 million in 2007; $7.24 in 2006

(Fiscal years end March 30)

Officers

Robert McKeon, Chairman, president of Veritas Capital Management, principal owner of DynCorp common stock

Herbert Lanese, President and CEO

Gen. Anthony Zinni (U.S. Marine Corps retired), executive vice president

Michael Thorne, senior vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer

Robert Rosenkranz, president of government services division

Natale DiGesualdo, president of maintenance and technical support services division

William Cavanaugh, senior vice president, business development

Some Directors

Gen. Barry McCaffrey (U.S. Army retired)

Gen. Peter Schoomaker (U.S. Army retired)

Gen Richard Hawley (U.S. Air Force retired)

Adm. Joseph Prueher (U.S. Navy retired)

Adm. Leighton Smith, Jr. (U.S. Navy retired)

DYNCORP MISSIONS AT HOME AND ABROAD

At home

Major operations center at Fort Worth Alliance Airport, employing about 400 people; serves as headquarters of aviation maintenance division, and civilian police training and security guard business units.

Provides maintenance for Air Force Presidential Airlift Wing at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, employing 500 people.

Provides maintenance and training for Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, Fort Campbell, Ky. as well as at Hunter Army Airfield (Ga.) and Grey Army Airfield (Wash.).

Maintenance for 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, KY.

Operates aerial wildfire fighting aircraft for California Division of Forestry.

Overseas

Civilian police training in Afghanistan and Iraq; logistical support for police departments including construction of regional police stations in Afghanistan.

Manages Air Force's war reserve material program in Southwest Asia, maintaining supplies, equipment and vehicles at multiple bases in the Persian Gulf.

Provides supplies and logistical support for United Nations at eight refugee camps in the Darfur region of Sudan. Training new army and civilian police for democratic government of Liberia. Provides logistical support for Africa Union peacekeeping forces in Somalia and Darfur.Contracts with State Department to operate aerial wing in support of coca eradication in Colombia. Military aircraft maintenance for Kuwait and United Arab Emirates.