Richard K. Bell is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. He is a distinguished diplomat who served as the US ambassador to Côte d’Ivoire from 2019 to 2023, culminating a career spanning over four decades in US foreign service and international development. As ambassador, he led an interagency team of over one hundred US direct-hire staff and more than three hundred locally engaged staff. Under his stewardship, the embassy managed significant programs including the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, with an annual budget exceeding one hundred million dollars, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s $536 million six-year Compact.
Prior to his role in Côte d’Ivoire, Bell served as chargé d’affaires ad interim at the US embassy in N’Djamena, Chad, from 2018 to 2019.
From 2015 to 2018, Bell was the foreign policy advisor at US Africa Command (AFRICOM) in Stuttgart, Germany. His career also includes service as deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Niamey, Niger, from 2012 to 2015, where he led the embassy as chargé d’affaires ad interim for a year of rapidly growing security cooperation following synchronized terrorist attacks in 2013. From 2009 to 2012, he served as counselor for political and economic affairs, and for seven months served as acting deputy chief of mission in Copenhagen, Denmark.
From 2008 to 2009, Bell led the multinational Provincial Reconstruction Team in Salahaddin Province, Iraq, assisting the provincial authorities in the dual transition to decentralized democratic governance. His earlier diplomatic assignments were at US embassies in London, Kuwait, Addis Ababa, Antananarivo, and Tel Aviv. He was the State Department’s desk officer for the United Arab Emirates and Qatar from 1996 to 1998. Before joining the US Foreign Service in 1991, he was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Yemen Arab Republic from 1977 to 1979, then worked for Catholic Relief Services in Yemen, Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, Egypt, and lastly Tunisia where he headed the program.
Bell holds a Master of Science in management from Boston University’s program at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and a Bachelor of Arts in French from Pennsylvania State University. He is fluent in French and has useful proficiency in Arabic.